Hand-dyed cashmere, even

Also, red is my FAVORITE color.

The second review in my cashmere series is a real treat... Sumptuosity Lace by All For Love of Yarn.  Oh.  My.  Goodness.  It is 70% baby alpaca, 20% silk, and 10% cashmere, and hoo nelly, do I love this yarn.  It is a very fine lace weight - there are 1300 yards in 3 oz - and so you need to be careful not to work it at too loose a gauge.  That being said, most lace patterns it's not overwhelmingly important exactly how big the finished object is, so that's easy to work around.  It is a two ply, but I haven't been having issues with splittiness like I do with a lot of two ply lace.

As for texture... I cannot stop patting this yarn.  It is beautifully soft and smooth.  It is also, however, extremely slippery.  One of my attempted swatches, I did on nickle plated needles (it was the only US4 I had!), and let me just say that it was a good thing the kids were already in bed.  My husband now jokes that I only swear when I'm in labor, and when I'm knitting lace.  It behaved itself quite well on my Harmony wood needles, however, so it's just an issue of the right needle for the right yarn.  On the note of swatches, this yarn really doesn't like to be frogged.  That fine baby alpaca halo just grabs.  That's a good thing tho if you happen to drop a stitch - if you catch it right away, it doesn't seem to run too far, which makes for much easier fixes.

Angela's yarns all have fabulous color.  The high silk content of this yarn in particular means it just DRINKS dye... the color is rich and saturated and glossy.  The kettle dye is very subtle, just enough to add some depth to the color, without distracting from the pretty stitch work at all.  It does have some halo to it, but not much.  A suggestion of a halo, perhaps.  In short?  I very much recommend this yarn.  It's absolutely delightful.

Do you have something you want me to review? Needles? Yarn? Notions? Drop me a line! marusempai at gmail dot com Put "Maru reviews" in the subject line.

The swatches, they LIE!

Just about every garment pattern out there says in no uncertain terms that you really, REALLY ought to swatch, to make sure that your FO turns out the right size.  This is all well and good.  I highly recommend swatching, for what it's worth.  But the problem is, sometimes swatches lie.  When I was pregnant with my youngest, I made myself a lovely cardigan.  One of those open front ones, so my belly could stick out the front while I was pregnant, and once I was done I could still wear it if I wanted to.  It came out just a teeny bit on the small side, but that was ok, because I swatched and knew it would grow a little bit when I washed it.  And grow it did.  The first FIVE times I washed it.  Now it is too big.  This is something of a moot point really, as it has angora in it and I seem to have developed a post pregnancy angora allergy... but maybe I could have worn it over a long sleeve shirt!  It is PRETTY!  So I suppose the point of this post is to whine.  The problem is probably that the extra weight of an entire wet sweater can sometimes stretch yarn further than it would have without the extra pull.  But it still makes me sad for my pretty blue too big sweater.

Crochet socks

Picture does not do yarn colors justice.

Remember when I talked about these?  It took me forever to get past the swatch!  As you can see though, they are coming along at a halfway decent clip.  I have already made an alteration tho... front post/back post ribbing looks nice, but it isn't stretchy the way single crochet ribbing is.  I'm looking forward to seeing how these fit.  I have wide ol' duck feet, but dainty little ankles, and had just resigned myself to socks being loose at the ankle, but it's looking like I'll be able to have socks snug all the way up with these.  Also?  The colors in this yarn are way fun.  I'm glad I'm using it for my crochet sock trial, as I don't knit vanilla socks very well (they bore me, frankly).  A complicated stitch pattern would get lost in the pretty colors.