Review: Panda Cotton

In all honesty, I think I like every Crystal Palace Yarns yarn I've tried.  Panda Cotton is no exception.  It is a fingering weight 59% bamboo, 25% cotton, 16% elastic nylon plied yarn.  I think it's an excellent choice for wool-free socks -- it is soft and springy and durable.  I freely admit that my Panda Cotton socks aren't very old, but they seem to be showing wear at a rate comparable to any of my wool socks.  It also comes in 50 g (as opposed to 100 g) balls, which I think is a perk.  The smaller put up makes it easier to get exactly how much you need if you are doing a larger project, yet isn't so small that it causes problems in smaller projects.  The yardage is pretty good at 182 per ball.  This is slightly less than most comparable wool yarns, however I've found this to be pretty standard.  Cotton just weighs more per yard than wool does, as far as I can tell.

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.

Ah, handspun...

How many yards do I have?  Heaven only knows.

So I love spinning.  I mean, seriously, I'm one of those crazy spinners that buys raw, unwashed fleece and processes it myself, by hand.  What I have a problem with is what on earth do I do with the resultant yarn.  A lot of it is in small skeins (hey, I get distracted easily), and it's difficult to know exactly how many yards of the stuff I have.  Thus, most of my handspun has been relegated to sitting in my stash.  But, I've been thinking about it, and have some ideas to use the lovely stuff.

• Scarves and shawls.  If it looks like you're going to run out of yarn, you can just make them smaller.
• Hats.  Don't take much yardage.
• For my high quantity handspun, start with a sweater vest in mind rather than a sweater.  If there's still yarn when you've got the body sewn up, do your sleeves two at a time.

So yeah, handspun!  Hopefully I'll be able to stash down a little bit with this strategy.