Patio Stones pattern preview

April 23, 2020 by Dr. Terri

My yarn subscription for this year is the Made Here Yarn Club 2020 from Sincere Sheep, which was a splurge but one I could afford and one that focuses on local makers. Pretty cool!

I decided to make up my own pattern (after getting partway through a lovely hat and realizing I wasn’t feeling it). I haven’t written the whole thing up yet, but I have a chart and some basic instructions. So… here’s a little preview. But I promise I’ll be making something finished eventually!

Patio Stones (pattern preview)

This asymmetric triangle shawl was made with 300 yards of Sincere Sheet Covet (dk weight) and a US-5 needle. It would probably be just as lovely (and not quite as heavyweight) with ~400 yards of fingering on whatever needle size you prefer.

Setup:

co 4 stitches

RS: kfb, k to last 3 stitches, k2tog, k

WS: k2, p to last stitch, kfb (increases 1 stitch)

repeat until you have 15 stitches, ending on a WS row

Main Body:

Follow chart 1. Blue section is repeated, but for first run it will be repeated 0 times.

Note that the chart starts from the bottom, I just haven’t flipped the numbers over yet because this is a preview and not a completed pattern yet. The pink stitches can be replaced with k1, k2tog if you prefer. If you know how to cable without a cable needle for these little 1 over 1 cables, do that. It’s so much easier.

Cast off:

When you’re close to your desired size (or running out of yarn) repeat the eyelet section (rows 5-3 on the chart above) and then bind off.

I know, I know, it’s got some work to go before it’s ready for publishing, but it’s been sitting in my drafts for weeks and I wanted to put it out there in case my toddler poured coffee on my computer before I got it finished!

Fetish cuff/necklace

July 30, 2019 by Dr. Terri

Ah, the 7th month, where resolutions start to really go off the rails! I’ve been decent at recording my projects on Instagram (though I did miss photographing a gift I made) and have gotten better at updating Ravelry, but this blog hasn’t seen a post yet this month and we’re almost at the end!So here’s a quick project I did on vacation: Fetish cuff by Laura Nelkin.The kit comes with everything you need (and then some), and the ring and clasp hardware is particularly nice.It was a surprisingly easy kit to do, given how complicated it looks! Probably ambitious beginner level, and there are instructional videos that walk you through it. (Though the focus is a bit out of whack, the explanations are good.)It took me probably a couple of hours to do with toddler interference. And it’s resilient enough to handle some toddler exploration once it was put together!It’s designed to be worn two ways. I expected to mostly wear it as a necklace, but I actually like it better as a cuff!I found these kits when I was looking at subscriptions that happen less than monthly, and I’m sorely tempted to subscribe, but I’m still unburrying myself from my unfinished Jimmy Beans kit, so I think I’ll stick to treating myself when there’s one I really like up on etsy.

Tosh Shawl Club 2018 – July to December

April 1, 2019 by Dr. Terri

It took 14 months instead of 12, but I finished my Tosh Shawl Club shawl! This was how I spent some birthday money last year. Since I have an end of year birthday, it tends to get subsumed by the holidays, so this was a neat way to celebrate monthly instead.

Despite the “shawl club” name it’s honestly is more of a wrap. But it’s warm and squishy and while it’s not a kit I would have bought if I’d seen it finished in a shop, I loved the process of getting mystery yarns and clues for a full year, so I definitely got the experience I wanted. Plus, part of the fun was going outside of my usual comfort zones.

July

August

September

October

Whoops, wrong year on this one and the next…

November

December

And the full shawl:

Definitely a fun experience! Looking back, I’m sort of sad I didn’t opt to continue my subscription for this year, but they took the mystery out and the planned shawl just wasn’t floating my boat, so I’m trying something new this year to get my monthly mystery fix!

Tosh Shawl Club 2018, January-June

March 25, 2019 by Dr. Terri

Last year I subscribed to a year-long mystery-a-long as a birthday gift to myself. It was really a great thing to do, though as I’ve mentioned I didn’t keep up on the last quarter. I haven’t finished, but I figure this is the sort of thing that should be split into two posts anyhow, so this is part 1!

January:

February:

March:

April:

May:

June:

Yarn Indulgences mini a month subscription!

February 25, 2019 by Dr. Terri

I had a great time with last year’s Tosh Shawl Club yarn subscription from Jimmy Beans, but decided to try something new this year rather than renewing.

This is https://www.yarnindulgences.club/. My first shipment finally arrived on February 21. (It shipped on Feb 11, I subscribed January 1st.)

When it arrived, my first thought upon seeing the plain white envelope it came in was “wow, that’s flat!”

Opening it up showed what I expected from the form factor: vacuum sealed yarn. How clever! I figure that’s how they can afford to send me posh yarn from Ontario for only $10. Shipping cost $1.80! I don’t know why January’s came near the end of February — I’m guessing it’s when it was dyed as opposed to when I get it?

It puffs up perfectly once opened and inside is some really soft hand-dyed cashmere/merino/nylon. I can’t wait to try it out! I’m thinking maybe some stained glass style colourwork in a hat? Maybe wait to see if it goes with next month’s mini? I don’t know but I’m going to pare down my active projects a bit first.

I gather they will rotate bases so I’ll get to try out their other options. This is great, since I sat in their booth at the yarn show we went to in Quebec and suffered such decision paralysis that I wound up not buying anything! Well, it wasn’t just decision paralysis; I also had to limit my shopping so it would fit in my luggage and I’d already fallen in love with some other yarn in another booth, but if I’d made a decision I would have been able to fit a mini!

Still, maybe then I would have been satisfied and not looked them up on the Internet and never subscribed to https://www.yarnindulgences.club/

So, uh, win?

One of the reasons I decided not to do the Tosh Shawl Club again is that I was tired of the single ply Tosh Merino Light, though, so I’m excited that my first package isn’t single ply as well as that it’s super extra squishy and wonderful.

Compare with my last package from Jimmy Beans:

Definitely more flat.

Comparing with the other $10/month subscriptions I’ve tried:

Yarn of the month: 2-3 swatch sized samples (maybe 20 yds each for a total around 40-80 yards?), Swatch patterns, one full sized pattern. Huge variety of yarns many of which I’ve not seen elsewhere.

(The company has changed hands so this has changed a lot since I was a subscriber.)

Jimmy Beans beanie bags: 3-4 swatch-sized samples (so around 60-80 yards total?), small project pattern for actual yarn (knit+crochet options, typically coffee cup cozy sized). Reusable zippered pouch. Small notion (eg, ruler, yarn needle). 5% back every quarter, so the $10/month is sort of $9.50. More familiar yarn brands.

(This one’s changed a lot since I was a subscriber too.)

Jimmy Beans Tosh Shawl Club: 80 yards of Tosh Merino Light (single ply, hand dyed, exclusive), year long mystery shawl pattern to go with yarn. Same deal with the cashback. No extras, though their cardboard shipping boxes are solid enough that we’re reusing them for small electronics projects.

(This one’s changed a bit this year, but not as much as the other two)

Yarn Indulgences mini-a-month: 100 yards hand dyed on their different bases, which look pretty nice! No pattern, no regular extras. (They say they might do that occasionally.) $10/month but prepaid subscriptions get a discount, so I got a year’s worth for $110, equivalent to $9.17/box.

Each one has its strengths, but this new one definitely wins for most yarn! This is what i wanted because I’m hoping to spark some creativity with mini skeins and maybe do some pattern creation over the year.

2018 fiber goals: how did I do?

January 1, 2019 by Dr. Terri

Last year, I set myself some fiber goals for 2018. So, how did I do?

2018 goals:

Use more of my project kits
More amigurumi!
Spin the neat fiber kit Kathy got me
Organize the stash

2018 Results:

1. Project kit success! I made up a beanie bag, started a cowl kit (but haven’t finished that one), and bought and started a Cascadial Wrap kit. Plus I mostly kept up with my Shawl Club subscription. I guess new kits don’t solve my pileup problem, but they make me happy and it’s nice to see that investing in pretty kits is a good thing to keep doing.

Cascadial Wrap:

Shawl club:

2. Amigurumi success! I made the baby Dread Pirate Potato an elephant that lives in his travel toy bag, a dino that lives at home, a pumpkin, and started an amigurumi advent calendar that will be my decorations next year.

Elephant:

Dinosaur:

Pumpkin:

Advent:

3. Fiber fail? I didn’t touch the kit, but I *did* do some pretty spinning and dyeing so I don’t feel so bad about it. Turns out the Dread Pirate loves my spinning wheel, which is great because I can leave it set up and he’ll touch it and enjoy it, but it’s hard to get time to use it myself. I’m going to have to work on a habit for next year.

Dye and spin experiment:

4. Stash success! I got most of the yarn into organized boxes other than the worsted and sock yarn I peruse regularly for inspiration. I managed to use more older yarn this year because it turns out I select based on squishing and comparing. So the stash has become better inspiration — something I really thought deeply about because I read A Stash of One’s Own this year. Total win!

Partway through organization:

There’s a row on the bottom that’s fabric boxes full of fabric, kits, and some recent purchases.

Appropriate current state:

More baby proof! It needs smaller labels.

Decoration/closeup:

Summary:

3/4 clear wins isn’t bad and I think my dye and spin experiment filled a similar niche to the fiber kit I didn’t touch, so I feel like I kept some spinning up even if I did it a different way. I think the yarn kits were a good fit for me, and the stash re-org got me in shape so that my office in nearly toddler friendly, and it helped me find treasures.

I’m still figuring out what I’ll strive for in 2019. Maybe this year is the year of the fingering weight sweater? Try the spinning set again? I’ve already got plans to take a steeking class so maybe that’s the easy goal #1!

Pi shawl: 5 shawls 5 days challenge

February 3, 2018 by Dr. Terri

Day 5 is the pi shawl, which I’ve always kind of wanted to try because of the name, but I hadn’t gotten around to it until this day!

After the square shawl, I decided to try a circular cast on with a crochet hook. It felt a lot like magic loop for knitting, and I liked it a lot more. I also knit with a circular needle, which is awkward to start but ok once it got big enough. Still, it did look funny when it was in progress:

It did block out, though!

Bind off is Jenny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off, for somewhat obvious reasons when you see the stretch in the blocking.

Yarn: Rowan Super Fine Merino DK, also from that Feb 2016 beanie bag. My goodness, this is the roundest of round yarns. The construction of this is what the network engineer in me wants to call twisted pairs, but in yarn it’s a cable construction (network cable, clearly). It is soft and lovely and so nice to knit with. Would definitely use again.

I did run out before the pattern was done, so I subbed in some pink yarn (leftover from the medallion hat, blue sky fibers of some sort, I think?) but then when that was running out I realized there wasn’t much more for me to learn by doing the whole thing so I just didn’t. Kinda like how it went with my math homework when they stopped checking it so I stopped doing it as a teen. (I think it dropped my grades by 2% and I decided I could live with that. Who knows what I’ll do when my kid is old enough to have homework…)

Asymmetrical Triangle shawl: 5 shawls 5 days challenge

February 1, 2018 by Dr. Terri

Day 3’s shawl is an asymmetric triangle shape. I like this one’s particular slip stitch/yarn over edging.

Yarn: Rowan Colorspun. This is a mohair-wool-polyamide blend, also from the Feb 2016 beanie bag and I hated it so much. To me, it felt like I was getting splinters in the sides of my fingers while I knit. I’m usually ok with mohair, so it might be the wool part of the blend that was the problem. End result: I couldn’t even bring myself to finish knitting up the sample.

Texture aside, it’s an interesting homespun lumpy blend with some subtle colour. But that texture was just too awful for me.

Comparing the remaining yarn on my 3 samples:

Crescent Shawl: 5 shawls 5 days challenge

January 31, 2018 by Dr. Terri

Day 2 is a crescent shawl, a familiar shape with an increase that’s unusual for me, and I’m not sure I’ve ever used it in an edging like this. The garter tab looks jarring on such a small piece, though I hardly notice those on larger shawls.

Unblocked:

I added an icord bind off because I couldn’t remember trying one before. It’s a nice edge, but feels weird on a shawl where I’d normally go at least a bit lacey or pointy. I can see using it on a sweater or maybe even a scarf, though, so I’m glad to have it in my repertoire.

Blocking:

Yarn is Rowan baby merino silk dk, a pretty heathered merino silk blend from the same Feb 2016 beanie bag. It’s more slippery in the ball than knit up, but it is still lush. I’m a sucker for silk blends so no surprise that I like this one.

I managed to split it a bit in the bind off (likely because I was doing it in dim light with a cranky baby Potato who didn’t want to sleep, no fault of the yarn) but other than that my own poor choices, this was great to knit with. I would definitely use this again.

Blocked:

Triangle shawl: 5 shawls 5 days challenge

January 30, 2018 by Dr. Terri

I’m trying out the 5 shawls 5 days challenge as a way to practice some shawl construction, since I had to experiment a bunch in a hurry when I was designing the flax shawl for my sister. Also, this is a nice excuse to use some of the yarn samples I never tried from my yarn subscription, so I can tick off an item on this year’s fiber goals.

It started in Monday, but I’ll be posting a day late so I can block my samples and try to get a photo in better light. Here’s a blocking photo in bad light:

Day 1 was a triangle shawl. It’s a pretty familiar shape, though probably not the one I’ve done most often. I put a picot edging on mostly to use up yarn (and as an experiment to see how much the picot edging needed — this was about 3x a regular row’s worth)

Yarn: Rowan Tweed. This is a very solid dk yarn. I like the rustic look, but I’m less excited about the feel, which is itchy. I didn’t mind knitting with it, but it wouldn’t be great for the worn-by-the-face shawls that I make most. It’d be great for a cabled purse or something, though.

This sample came with the February 2016 little beanie bag (I’m not sure there even was a big one then?) and was intended for a cup cozy, which would have been a good fit for this yarn. Alas, as I burn my tongue easily and prefer my drinks lukewarm, I’ve never had much use for cup cozies, so this beanie bag languished in my stash. It had 4 samples, so that will cover most of this week’s mini shawls.

Medallion hat using Jimmy Beans Big Beanie Bag – April 2017

September 9, 2017 by Dr. Terri

I’ve actually *just* as of September cancelled my Big Beanie Bag subscription, because I’m anticipating a busy fall and my projects have piled up to the point where I need a break. Still, I have managed to knit some of them up!

April’s Bag looked like this:

And here’s a photo summary of what I made with it:

Basically, I started casting on for the included pattern, realized I wanted to do something a bit more fancy with the yarn, and made up a new pattern on the spot with more colourwork and a shorter shaping. I’ve become a huge fan of having little hats that can live in my coat pockets so the pompom also had to go. This one became a present to my grandmother, since my Mom mentioned that she could also use a lighter fall pocket hat, and I thought the colours would suit her the minute I took them out of the bag. Such pretty heathers!

Yarn

The yarn is all Blue Sky Fibers Woolstok. I love the lightly heathered colours, and they were soft enough for hat use for my tastes. This was a great yarn to sample: gorgeous colours, nice to work with. I’m not sure if I’d go out of my way to find it again since I’m spoiled for choice in the Portland area, but it was definitely a treat to get it as a sample!

Pattern

This was pretty off-the-cuff and untested, but here’s a rough pattern:

Needle size: 8.
Pattern is in multiples of 8. If you need it bigger or smaller, add or subtract in multiples of 8.
(My head is 24 inches, for reference. Do a gauge swatch, calculate from there.)

Brim:
Cast on 104 (13×8) in the round using main colour.
Knit 1.5 inches of 1×1 twisted ribbing (it doesn’t have to be twisted, but I like the way it looks)
Knit 1.5 inches plus a few rows so the turned brim doesn’t cover the pattern of straight stockinette.

Colourwork:
Follow colour chart as below or written pattern:

MC-G = Main Colour (in this case, light grey)
CC-V = contrast colour one (in this case, dark violet)
CC-F = contrast colour two (in this case, fuchsia)
CC-P = contrast colour three (in this case, pink)

First band of colour is dark violet:
Row 1: {k3 in MC-G, k3 in CC-V, k2 in MC-G} repeat 13 times
Row 2: {k2 in MC-G, k2 in CC-v, k1 in MC-G, k2 in CC-v, k1 in MC-G} repeat
Row 3: {k1 in MC-G, k2 in CC-v, k3 in MC-G, k2 in CC-v} repeat
Second band of colour is fuchsia:
Row 4: {k3 in MC-g, k3 in CC-F, k2 in MC-G}
Row 5: {k1 in MC-G, k1 in CC-F} repeat
Row 6: repeat row 4. That is, {k3 in MC-g, k3 in CC-F, k2 in MC-G}
Third band of colour is pink:
Row 7: repeat row 3 only with pink in place of fuschia
Row 8: repeat row 2 with colour substitution
Row 9: repeat row 1 with colour substitution

Tie off colours and continue in main colour.
knit 1.5 inches of stockinette (or desired height for your head).

Decreases:
If you did more or less than 13×8 = 104 stitches at the beginning, you’ll need to adjust things accordingly. (e.g. if you did 12×8, you’ll start with a k11 instead of a k12)

Row 0: {k12, k2tog} repeat
Row 1: {k11, k2tog} repeat
Row 2: {k10, k2tog} repeat
and so on down until you get to a few stitches left and can tie them all together nicely.

Here’s a somewhat lousy picture of it on my head (before I blocked it, in case you’re wondering why it looks a bit wonky):

And post-blocking:

I gave this to my grandmother when I was out visiting in July, but I imagine she hasn’t had much chance to use it, so who knows if she’ll really like it! It was fun to knit, though, and I hope it’ll be useful to her as the weather cools.

Incidentally, I’m going to miss my yarn subscription: Jimmy Beans really did a nice job of giving me something new to try every month. But I was having trouble finding a few days to a week or so out of every month to actually do a new project. I imagine you’ll be seeing me write up random projects for quite some time before I run out of beanie bags, though, so taking some time off is the right choice even if I’m going to miss the new-yarn-every-month aspect. I did notice that Yarn Of the Month has a new owner and I’m tempted to try it out again, since 2 tiny balls of yarn for swatching is much easier to fit into my schedule, but I’m holding fast to taking a break for now. 🙂

Jimmy Beans Big Beanie Bag – November 2016

November 24, 2016 by Dr. Terri

This November Jimmy Beans Big Beanie Bag marks one of the few times I’ve gotten the colourway as shown in the project photo!

There’s a lot of yarn in this one, although it doesn’t poof up quite as much as October’s mega bag it’s pretty close. Beyond the yarn, there’s a knitting ruler/needle sizer (I think this is my 3rd, but again, this is one of those tools where I don’t mind a few duplicates), some “metallic measuring temporary tattoos” that I find kind of inexplicable but pretty, the typical moisturizer sample (again, I prefer the wool wash samples but I guess it’s a nice way to learn the scents available). This month’s bag is also cute with the turkey and the advice. I’ve had to opt out of thanksgiving with J’s family this year, so I’ll be doing less eating and more knitting, personally!

The theme for the wool was favourite yarns, but surprisingly, I’m not sure I’ve even heard of Tahki Zara, I’ve only used Noro Kureyon once (in a YOTM sample), and I’d have to check my archives to see when I last used Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted or Berroco Vintage or even if I have (I think I’ve sampled them both, though). So obviously they’re not my staple yarns, which kind of makes this bag more fun for me. Noro is the multicoloured sample, for those of you not familiar with the brand. The pink is the Zara and it feels super soft (merino!). The deep purple is the lamb’s pride and it’s a neat mohair blend that feels dense — I doubt it’ll be my favourite but it should be warm. The brown is the Berocco Vintage which is a soft acrylic/wool/nylon blend.

The pattern is a cute hat and wristlets pattern. I like the lacing, but I don’t think I’d use wristlets, so I’ll either put a thumbhole in there or save the rest of the yarn for something else, I think!

Jimmy Beans Big Beanie Bag – October 2016

November 20, 2016 by Dr. Terri

Bit of a photo-taking spree today, mostly of things that will be gifts so I can’t share them for a while. But I also photographed two Big Beanie Bags that I haven’t started knitting yet, so here’s one of them! I’ll probably save these for travel projects, so you won’t see them knit up for a while.

When this bag arrived, I was shocked at how big it was even before I opened the package. It’s got two balls worth of Rowan Pure Wool in there! That is a lot more yarn than I expect in a bag, to be honest. It’s usually $10.95 on JBW’s website, so 2 balls makes up most of the subscription price of $25, not even counting everything else. (Admittedly, that’s on the high end from what the internet tells me this yarn costs, but it’s still nice to see that the value is comparable.)

Also in this package: a “handitool” (which is awesome, since my last one is missing somewhere in the house and I like having something like this in my project bags), a packet of soak handmade (meh, I’d rather the wool wash, as I have many little moisturizers in much more convenient packaging), jeweled stitch markers (a cute, cheap addition), and a legwarmer pattern. This isn’t the 80s, but honestly, since I walk around in damp winter all the time, I’m thinking warm woolen legwarmers might actually be awesome, so I might give the pattern a try.

The total standout this month is the bag itself, though, which might be my new favourite from them. The older ones have tips on the bags, which is handy, but doesn’t make them nearly as fun for knitting in public unless you’re around other knitters. This bag is fun for everyone!

I have a “mystery” bag which means I don’t put any restrictions on the yarn (the other options are “neutrals” “cool” and “warm”). I got purples this month, which is really lovely. It’s the kind of colours my grandmother loves, and she has great taste.

This Rowan isn’t an ooh ahh so soft yarn, but it feels like it’ll be warm and hardwearing, so I’ll bet it’ll be perfect for the included pattern.

Overall, this subscription continues to live up to my expectations, and my only concern is that I won’t be able to keep up with my bags alongside all the other projects I want to do!

Neapolitan Scarflette – Jimmy Beans Big Beanie Bag: August 2016

November 7, 2016 by Dr. Terri

I’ve been really enjoying Jimmy Beans Big Beanie Bags, but I haven’t been so good about photographing my projects for both happy and sad reasons I won’t go into right now. But despite my lack of documentation, these are great! These are like the grown-up cousin to their little yarn sample bags: more yarn, projects that are more wearable (think shawls, hats, cowls) and less trinket-like (think coasters, finger puppets). What really seals it for me is that these are a perfect “fits in the purse and keeps me entertained for hours” project when I’m running off in a hurry and need something that doesn’t require planning or fancy swatches and already has yarn measured out so I’m not carrying multiple full-sized balls in my bag. I had no idea I needed grab and go kits until I had a little stash of them!

There’s the August kit: nice drawstring bag, glossy printed pattern, 4 balls of yarn, a packet of hand lotion (sometimes it’s wool wash, which I prefer), and a little notions box. The notion changes every month, and sometimes the yarn isn’t 4 balls, but it’s similar most months.

I like the little notions box, although I haven’t quite figured out what to put in all its little teensy compartments, and I should have taken a picture with it open for you to see them all!

If you’re curious, here’s the Jimmy Beans (small) beanie bag and the Yarn of the Month bag for August 2016, since this was an overlap month before I decided to drop the smaller subscriptions.

August’s yarn came from Koigu, a brand I’d heard of but didn’t realize they were from Ontario. So I learned something new! The yarn very easy to knit with, maybe a bit less fuzzy/haloed than I like for my shawls, but that makes it easier to wear when it’s not really *that* cold in the office.

The pattern for August is Neapolitan Scarflette by Rachel Roden. I think she’s RachelUnraveled on Ravelry, but this design doesn’t seem to be up so it might be someone else. This is a pattern that is simple to knit but annoying to count, since there’s a lot of sections that are almost but not quite the same. I assume a lot of this was just in trying to make good use of the 4 same-sized balls of yarn, but it did have me thinking a lot about how to optimize pattern writing to make the changed sections easier to notice. I suspect my next more complicated patterns are going to have a lot of colours or something as a result of this. Or possibly just be more simplified in memory of all the times I’ve cruised past the directions because I’m in a rhythm.

One thing I really liked about this pattern was the fact that it calls out a useful skill to learn: knitting the ends in as you go. Definitely this shawl encourages you to learn that one with all the colour changes! Knitting in ends as I go is not something I did all the time before and I think I’ll find myself doing it automatically now after all that practice, so I’m pretty pleased that they put that in. I’m leveling up in fibercraft in leaps and bounds lately!

Here it is all balled up more like I’d wear it as a scarf, and you can see that there’s still some yarn leftover! I love the colours, so hopefully I’ll find a nice time to use these in a spot of colourwork. Doing colourwork remains one of the reasons I was willing to get so many small balls of yarn after all!

Overall I was very pleased with this kit. I actually started my subscription up again right after the initial 3 months finished because I heard they had a few of these left and I could get one, and I’m pretty pleased that I did.

Yarn Subscription preview, August 2016 (Yarn of the Month and Jimmy Beans Beanie Bags)

August 14, 2016 by Dr. Terri

Not pictured:
Beanie bags came with the usual bag (olympic themed), t-pins, a packet of soak, and some coaster patterns that I’m excited about because crochet mandalas are still all the rage.

YOTM came with swatch patterns and a copy of this pattern. It was printed with a printer clearly running low on ink, but legible if a bit more stripey pop-art than probably intended.

As is somewhat usual, Beanie Bags offers more, smaller samples than YOTM. The YOTM samples are both silk blends so probably a bit more fancy than the BB ones this month, although they’re a neat range of linen and cotton and blends. Love the colours in both.

There’s also a 3rd option in the smaller yarn subscription front! Jimmy beans has a “BIG beanie bag” that comes in at $25 and contains everything you need (except knitting needles) for one small project. I signed up to get 3 bags (May, June, July) and have thus far received one for fingerless gloves and two fairly different cowls (which I will take pictures of later, but you can see the first two here), the second of which was a brioche thing that I was really excited to try. Two of these I’ve already knit up because they’re perfect “grab and go” kits with the pattern and everything inside, and especially with the chaos of this summer, I’ve had need for easy kits, so it worked out pretty well. I’m not on an auto-renew, though, so no August kit for me!

Both beanie bags and YOTM continue to be a nice value for your money if you want to try little yarn samples, but it’s nice to have a slightly larger option too. It’s tempting to drop the two little subscriptions and have just the big one for a while!

Yarn of the Month Club, July 2015

August 11, 2016 by Dr. Terri

Hello my poor neglected maker blog, long time no see! It’s been a busy few months, in good ways, in bad ways, in sad ways. But I have been making things, and maybe I’ll eventually take pictures of my wedding dress and maybe I’ll eventually frog that section of the cardi that wasn’t right and maybe I’ll take some better photos of the pokéball and get some cards printed to hand out. Or maybe I’ll get caught up in the new things I want to make for maker faire and disappear again. Such is life.

What I will do today is document July’s YOTM shipment, since I finished those swatches and finally got around to taking some photos of them.

These two yarns are pretty similar, with the black Cleo slightly thicker than the pink Loli, but both with a similar icord type structure.

Cleo by Debbi Bliss

4.75 sts/inch on US 8
62% cotton, 38% polyester
98 yards. Color: 60001

Front of swatch:

Back of swatch:

I really love this swatch: it’s pleasantly sproingy and black, which means it would make a lovely face scrubby for makeup removal. I may just adopt it for that rather than saving it for the swatch blanket.

Loli by Debbi Bliss

6 sts/inch on US 6
80% cotton, 20% polyester
120 yards. color: 61006

The colour pops are actually looser than the main yarn, which was a surprise!

Front of swatch:

That’s definitely not the promised 5″ square, but I decided I wasn’t in the mood to re-knit it at the time because the needles I was using tended to snag.

Back of swatch:

This blend is much more cotton-like than the Cleo, feeling more like a more stretchy cotton rather than like a lofty polyester.

Both of these yarns were pretty similar to knit: springy, liable to catch on the lousy needles I was using but no problem with good needles. I liked the swatch patterns (thankfully no mistakes in the swatch this time!) I gather from a bit of searching that they’re meant to be beginner-friendly yarns, which makes some sense.

They knit up quickly once I switched needles. I’d definitely consider using these yarns for kids toys or anything else where washability and durability was a priority. They’d probably be good for summer stuff or folk avoiding animal fibers, although they don’t feel particularly luxurious to me so I don’t think I’d make big projects out of them. Still, fun to try!

Yarn of the Month Club, January 2015

March 24, 2016 by Dr. Terri

January’s Yarn of the Month package has some serious variety in it! Raffia, cotton-linen gradient, and a single ply acrylic-wool super-saturated gradient. These were all super fun, but I was most taken with learning to block raffia. So flexible and shape-able when damp!

Classic Shadow

Classic Shadow
“This yarn has such beautiful colourways – it would be perfect at jazzing up a simple project”
4.5 sts/inch on US 8
70% Acrylic, 30% wool

Single ply, acrylic-wool, super-saturated colour goodness. I love the swatch pattern!

Front unblocked and blocked:

Back unblocked and blocked:

Those colours are great, although I will caution that they bled a little upon blocking. After a wash or two, though, I could totally see using this in a brilliant “screw all those pastels” baby project.

Good Earth Adorn

Good Earth Adorn
“This yarn is perfect for lacy spring knitting”
4 sts/inch on us 8
47% linen 53% cotton

This is a really nice linen-cotton blend. I could actually see making a garment out of this one, even though I’m not the hugest fan of working with linen (the “so soft after many washings” is too long a pay-off for me).

I think the stitch pattern might make a nice dishcloth, though, and those things get washed a lot more than garments:

It wasn’t evident to me that it would be a gradient from the ball, so that was a neat treat. Here it is blocked:

And in kite form! 😉

Yashi

Yashi by Universal Yarn
“This yarn is challenging to knit and creates beautiful and sturdy projects”
3.75 sts/in on US 9
100% Raffia!

I’d been curious about raffia but I couldn’t bring myself to buy a whole ball to try it out. Thankfully, this is exactly the sort of reason I subscribed to Yarn of the Month so I was quite pleased to get such an unusual yarn! It feels weird to be knitting something that feels like paper, but I got used to it quickly. I honestly didn’t think it was that hard to knit after you got into the swing of things: the raffia is much more flexible than I’d have expected.

I didn’t like the seed stitch swatch recommendation because it didn’t really show off the neat flatness possible with this fiber, so I switched mine up with some bands of stockinette to show the difference:

The biggest surprise of using the raffia was learning that it can be blocked. (Thanks to the fine folk at Black Sheep at Orenco for telling me that!) It was super satisfying to block, as the damp raffia becomes flexible and soft.

I was surprised by how taken I was with the Raffia. I might have to see about making myself a hat or something!

Conclusion

An interesting batch of yarns, but the real winner for me was getting to try out the raffia. Who knew I’d like it so much? I should see if there’s still some in the sale bin at Black Sheep at Orenco…

Jimmy Beans Wool Beanie Bags, January 2016

March 21, 2016 by Dr. Terri

January 2016’s Beanie Bag was all about yarn construction. I got the purple version, which was really quite nice! This month’s notion was a shawl pin from Knitter’s Pride (I was so glad mine arrived intact — apparently a few got broken in transit!), there was the usual little package of wool wash from soak, a pattern coupon (I forget if I used this one or not), and of course the 4 balls of yarn.

I just want to give a quick shout-out to January 2016’s bag: The snowflakes are so cute, and I was initially disappointed that the new zipper didn’t look as pretty until I realized that it also doesn’t seem to catch the yarn as much as the chunkier old ones. So score one for improved functional design!

There are 4 samples. You can read about them on the Beanie Bags website for Jan 2016, but in short they were:
20 yds of Alpaca Lana D’Oro
20 yds of Highland Duo
20 yds of Cloud
20 yds of El Cielo

The last one is exactly the same, including the colour, as a sample I’d tried from YOTM, so that was amusing. I used it very differently in this project, though.

The pattern was a simple kerchief, like a big chunk of granny square since I did the crochet version because I like crochet colour changes better. I’m not sure what I’ll use it for, but that super-soft edge is really nice. I’d never really worked on a project with 4 completely different types of yarn before. Kind of fun, and something I would totally do again.

Just to do a quick compare/contrast, here’s the Beanie Bag yarns beside my Yarn of The Month yarns. The YOTM sample (on the left) has a broader variety of unusual yarns to try (a single ply with bright colours, raffia, and a gradient linen-cotton mix), while the Beanie Bag yarns although different are intended to go together. It’s kind of interesting how the strategy is different. Also, in case anyone’s curious, I weighed the yarns and the Beanie Bags samples came in a bit heavier than YOTM in January, but it’s pretty close.

Also, I had forgotten that Jimmy Beans does a 5% cashback on yarn, and that this applies to the Beanie Bags and was auto-applied to this bag because I’d gotten to the threshold of $1, so I got this bag for $9 instead of $10. It might have been fun to build up a larger discount over time and then treat myself, but this is so much more convenient and practical and I never forget to use it. Handy! Between this and the fact that YOTM has had to raise their prices a bit to $9.50 (from $9.25), the prices are even more close than ever for people who keep a continuous Beanie Bags subscription.

Overall, I don’t think I learned as much from this Beanie Bag as I have from others, but it’s still a very nice bag! I got a usable project (although I don’t know how much I *will* use the kerchief as it’s started to become itchy as I wear it to write this… and I’m not sure which yarn I’m reacting to!), a nice shawl stick, a great bag, and a convenient travel size of wool wash.

Jimmy Beans Wool Beanie Bags, December 2015

March 17, 2016 by Dr. Terri

December’s theme was “superwash” and it included 5 samples in worsted weight. This seemed like a perfect time for me to practice my colourwork, since “do a small fair isle project” is on my craft goal list for this year, and I need practice with colourwork.

In addition to the yarns, there’s some pom-pom makers, patterns for wine bottle cozies, a packet of Soak wool wash, and a coupon for a discounted pattern (which I forgot about before it expired, alas!)

I took quite a few photos of this bag, but honestly when I’m looking for info on a bag I often wish there were more pictures rather than less, so if you’re curious, I put even more pictures up in my curiousity.ca/things I’ve made album on flickr.

Here’s some photo spam of the yarns:

Plymouth Worsted Merino Superwash

This was the softest yarn of the bunch!

Madeleinetosh Tosh Vintage

This has the subtle colour changes that Madeleinetosh is known for, although they aren’t super obvious in my photos of the little ball.

Lorna's Laces Shepherd

This is a nice woodsy variegated with a looser, squishy ply.

Rowan Pure Wool Worsted

A pleasant heathered yarn. I particularly liked working with this one.

Universal Yarn Deluxe Worsted

Another pleasant heathered yarn which was a great match for the Rowan.

My Fair Isle sampler

Overall, they all felt pretty similar, and it’s possible that difference in softness was a function of the dyes more than the yarn itself (although the different plying does make some difference). This was great for my purposes, since it meant they worked okay together!

This detail shot shows you two important things: #1, the variation in colour in the madeleinetosh sample. #2, the lesson I learned about fair isle samplers, which is that you *really* need to work in some sort of border to anchor the colour changes. I’ll keep this in mind for the next time I do a colourwork sampler!

Here’s the whole piece:

The patterns were taken from “Mastering Colour Knitting”

I’m not sure how I’ll fit this long sampler into my blanket made of samples yet, but I think I’m at the point where I should start putting it together rather than filing all my samples in a binder!

Yarn Subscription preview, February 2016 (Yarn of the Month and Jimmy Beans Beanie Bags)

March 12, 2016 by Dr. Terri

One more preview photo for today!

These yarns have been sadly neglected in favour of Rose City Yarn Crawl stuff, but they’ll be coming up soon! I’m very much looking forwards to more teensy tiny sample knits.

Yarn of the Month is on the left, with that tempting stained glass pattern that might have me ditch the usual swatch patterns in favour of trying a two-colour affair. Jimmy Beans is on the right with the Eddie the Eagle-themed package. Apparently they yarnbombed the Sundance film festival in celebration!

Yarn Subscription preview, January 2016 (Yarn of the Month and Jimmy Beans Beanie Bags)

March 12, 2016 by Dr. Terri

I took this picture back in January but apparently never actually shared it, so here’s a belated preview, if that makes any sense:

Yarn of the Month is on the left, Beanie Bags on the right. Since I’m planning to block the YOTM samples tonight and nearly done with the project for the Beanie Bags, I’ll leave further discussion of the contents until the full reviews.

I had not taken a picture for February because the Beanie Bags package was delayed to the point where I was completely entrenched in Rose City Yarn Crawl knitting when it arrived, but I’ve taken a quick snap today that I’ll put up shortly!

Yarn Subscription preview, March 2016 (Yarn of the Month and Jimmy Beans Beanie Bags)

March 12, 2016 by Dr. Terri

Both my subscriptions arrived on the same day, so here’s a quick preview!

My Jimmy Beans Beanie Bag on the left is a collection of sport weight merino in pretty pinks, with the newer square bag like they did last month, a Soak wool wash packet and this month’s notion, which is plastic spiral stitch markers. I don’t have any of those so I’m pretty pleased!

My Yarn of the Month Club mailing has two larger samples without any obvious theme. The yellow is a neat wool/linen blend with an interesting texture. The white is a slippery, shiny wool/polypropylene/nylon blend that is unlike anything I’ve ever knit by feel alone, but it’s even neater than that because it changes colour in the sun! I’ll try to get some better pictures of it tomorrow when I’ve got more sunlight!

Jimmy Beans Wool Beanie Bags, November 2015

February 1, 2016 by Dr. Terri

I finally sat down and made a decision about what to make with my Beanie Bags yarn. So freeing!

First, let’s look at the package. The mailing envelope contained a single bag filled with stuff:

The packaged contained 4 balls of yarn in the same shade of grey (although the light catches them differently in the photo below, they’re clearly the same shade in person), a plastic yarn needle, and a packet of soak fabric wash.

Here it is all together with the card and packaged-by note so you can see the other side of the bag, which is fun too:

Very cute! You can read about the yarns on the Jimmy Beans Wool website. The “learn a thing about yarn” theme here is blending. I’m familiar with doing custom yarns in this way since here in Portland we have Yarnia, an entire store dedicated to custom yarn blends. I visited Yarnia as a stop on the Rose City Yarn Crawl and while I wasn’t willing to wait for winding something custom, I was impressed by the huge selection of options.

As I said in my previous post, it took me a while to sit down and decide what to do with these yarns, since there were a bunch of possible combinations. I finally settled on a pair of two-yarn blends.

Shibui Pebble and Cima

I just want you all to admire how black and white the yarn ball photos look. I had a momentary freak-out when they downloaded from the camera because I thought something had gone wrong and I was getting a greyscale photo instead of the original, but no, I just took very monochrome pictures.

Cima is super soft, Pebble has nice texture. The combo gives you the best of both worlds! I grabbed a stitch dictionary and tried out a kind of leafy swatch. Here it is unblocked:

This is “lace ribbons” on page 63 of Melissa Leapman’s “The Knit Stitch Handbook” if you’re trying to duplicate it.

The end result is soft, flexible, and has that texture. Very nice! The swatch stretches out and looks a bit more angular when blocked, but the flexibility and softness of the yarn remain.

Shibui Maai and Staccato

Maai is pretty similar to the chained alpaca yarn I used for my kitty hat (it’s Misti Tui) and my one complaint with that yarn is that it’s too soft and fuzzy show much stitch definition.

This blend, however, is all “by our powers combined!” and it’s got reasonable stitch definition with a bit of a sheen, but it’s still soft and plush with a halo of fuzz.

The swatch is “tumbling blocks” from page 46 of Melissa Leapman’s “The Knit Stitch Handbook.” Chosen because it’s a knit/purl only texture so there isn’t too much help if the yarn can’t carry on its own. The photo is unblocked and only one side, but it basically looks the same blocked and on the reverse side.

Conclusion

Once I got around to using it, I really loved this Beanie Bag. I got to try a new technique and honestly, once I sat down with the stitch dictionary I didn’t have any trouble figuring out what to do. Just needed to get over the hump of indecision, I guess, and decide that swatches were the plan for this bunch. I loved the Shibui yarns and could see myself buying more of any of these, and it’s nice that I can turn around and just get them from the Jimmy Beans Wool website..

I’m not sure I can see myself doing a whole lot of yarn blending in this way, mostly because I can’t see myself building up a stash with appropriately matching colours for that. It seems to me that it would make more sense to take advantage of local store Yarnia if I wanted a blend, since they have a huge range of yarns and colours right there.

But I *could* see myself going out of my way to blend a yarn that wasn’t working for me, and now I’ve got a better sense of how a couple of blends work, so I feel like I learned a useful technique. Thanks JBW!

Yarn of the Month Club, December 2015

January 25, 2016 by Dr. Terri

Astute readers may note that I’m doing the December YOTM review but still haven’t done the Beanie Bag full review. That’s because even though it’s January I still haven’t knit up anything with any of my Beanie Bag yarns. How embarrassing. Now, I could blame a busy holiday, but I the answer is much simpler than that: I don’t know what to knit. Without a recommended swatch just sitting there in the bag, and a combo of yarns to choose (remember, this was the “try two held together of different types!” package), the barrier to just sitting down and doing it is a lot harder. What needle size should I use? What should I knit? Which combo of yarns? Should I try the included headband pattern even though I barely ever wear headbands? This isn’t a “grab all the supplies and throw in purse” kind of project and apparently that’s a barrier.

This isn’t an unsolvable problem, of course, but since the idea behind doing tiny yarn samples was that I wouldn’t have a huge backlog of unused yarn, it’s a bit distressing to realise that not having swatch patterns in the bag makes such a difference. I’m approaching the end of my self-imposed “I’ll try this in 3 months and then decide” and I’m torn. I love the packages, they feel like a serious treat and I like the way each one has a theme that involves teaching you about fiber, and I like taking pictures of them, but if I’m not using them, I should probably give up and move on.

So expect some experimentation on that front soon! I’ve grabbed some stitch dictionaries and a set of interchangable needles and queued up an episode of Dr. Who, but there’s a percent chance that what you’re going to see next is a bunch of tiny octopi.

Anyhow, in the meantime, here’s the easy-to-use Yarn of the Month for December!

This month’s yarn was *super* posh. The black is fuzzy and soft, and the red is one of the nicest silk blends I’ve ever used. It was a huge contrast to the pleasant-but-unexciting superwash in my other yarn bag, which isn’t to say that the other was bad at all but wow did I ever want to play with these first!

The pattern

It’s a Santa hat! I think I might stop mentioning the patterns; I hardly ever use them.

Soavia

Soavia
“Really soft and smooshy with a beautiful sheen”
5.5 sts/inch on US 7
65% Wool 20% Kid Mohair 15% Silk
164 yds Color: 60

This yarn is plush and soft. You can’t tell too much from the photo, but it’s got a really pleasant halo and somehow manages a teensy sheen as well in person. It would make a positively lovely scarf or cowl, or anything worn close to the skin. It’s the sort of yarn you just want to sink your fingers into.

Given the halo, it’s pretty surprising how easy this is to work with (sometimes fuzzy yarns can be pretty temperamental). The stitch pattern with the long criss-cross thing really shows off the yarn. It’s soft even knit into tiny stitches, but those long ones are especially easy on the fingers. So very soft. It makes me want to do a bigger project with fuzzy yarns, even though it’s getting warmer and warmer here.

Roslyn

Roslyn
“Colourful and subtle and a workhorse yarn with great texture”
5.25 sts/inch on US 6
65% Wool 35% Silk
382.76 yds color: 06

This is one of the nicest silk blends I’ve ever worked with. It’s flexible, soft, and feels like it would make amazing clothes because it’s a bit lighter than many wools. It somehow feels silky without feeling too slick. The heathering and colour is fun too.

The stitch pattern is a pretty neat cable. Although I don’t think I got the sides quite even! Yarn was very easy to work with, the slight side-to-side difference is a me problem, not a yarn problem, and it might even block out.

I was surprised to see that this yarn’s regular price is $15/100g because it feels like a much fancier and more expensive blend. Thank you Cascade for producing such nice luxury yarns!

Summary

December’s YOTM was a real treat, even in the face of me working with the super nice yarns I was using for presents in December. I’d definitely use either of these yarns again, and Cascade at least should be a thing I can find around here so I can check out the other colours. Guess I’ll keep an eye out during the yarn crawl!

Yarn of the Month Club, November 2015

January 14, 2016 by Dr. Terri

Not sure what I’d say what November’s theme was, but it certainly resulted in some pretty yarns arriving on my doorstep!

The Pattern

A drop stitch shawl. Probably won’t make it into my repertoire because there are just so many shawl patterns in the world, but who knows, maybe it’ll be perfect for some specific ball of yarn?

El Cielo by Cascades Yarns

El Cielo by Cascades Yarns
“This warm and ethereal yarn is excellent for large lace patterns.”
4 sts/in on US 8
89% superfine alpaca 11% Nylon
579.6 yds color 04

This is so soft and light! I always love alpaca, but this turns alpaca into something like mohair, and it’s amazing. It’s also teensy-tiny if you don’t count the fluff — it took me way longer than I expected to knit that tiny swatch!

The stitch pattern gets a bit lost in the halo of this yarn, but with a bit of light or white behind it, it becomes a subtler, fuzzier version of lacework that I quite enjoy.

Artliea by Borgo De’Pazzi

Artliea by Borgo De’Pazzi
“This superwash yarn is soft and snazzy and super fun to knit up”
3.25 sts/inch on US 11
69% superwash 30% polyamide 1% polyester
79 yds color 89

This is basically two yarns sewn together: a slow variegated superwash and a shiny metallic ribbon:

The ribbon works really well to add a bit of sparkle. This is thick and pretty easy to work with because the two pieces are sewn together rather than just plied. My only complaint is that it isn’t quite as soft as my alpaca, but I understand that I am getting ridiculously spoiled.

I think this one would probably be a really fun treat for a new knitter, since it’s not to hard to work with and the slow colour change and sparkle ribbon really add a lot to even pretty basic stitches. Even basic garter stitch would be pretty neat because the yarn showcases the up-down of the knit stitches and the horizontal nature of the purls.

Summary

Really great yarns for November! Although I liked the Artliea I don’t see myself buying more because I’ve been doing a lot of texturework that needs solids and tonals to really shine, but I could definitely see picking it up as a gift. El Cielo is one I’ll remember as a beautiful fuzzy lace option — I’d actually love to do a sweater from this but I think I’d start with something easier for myself before I could tackle this. Maybe a huge fuzzy shawl for my grandmother, though?

Yarn Subscription preview, December 2015 (Yarn of the Month and Jimmy Beans Beanie Bags)

December 15, 2015 by Dr. Terri

Quick peek at my yarn subscriptions for December 2015:

On the left is Yarn of the Month Club, on the right is Jimmy Beans’ Beanie Bags.

As with last month, Jimmy Beans Beanie Bags really wins on presentation. The bag is cute and just packed with pretty cards and offers and patterns. I think they win on sheer amount of yarn this time, too! Those circular things are pom-pom makers. This wasn’t obvious to me until I read their info page, but I’m kind of excited ’cause I was just thinking that my current system of cardboard tends to make kind of messy pompoms and that I could probably do better.

This month, Yarn of the Month Club wins on having the more luxe yarn with their theme of silk/wool blends (one’s silk/wool, one’s silk/wool/mohair). As you know if you’ve read my reviews, YOTM isn’t always so fancy, so it’s a particularly nice treat this month that it’s so different from my other samples! It’s hard to tell from the photo, but these are super soft.

Excited to try both of my subscription bags, but with the holidays and my holiday knitting, it might be a little while before I get to them! Although they are small enough to fit in my suitcase…

Yarn of the Month Club, October 2015

December 13, 2015 by Dr. Terri

It’s Dec 13, which means I’m a little overdue for my October YOTM review. I did the swatches and I’ve had the pictures ready to go for a while, though, so it’s time to write!

October 2015’s yarns have a autumn colour scheme: brown and orange. The swatch descriptions this month also included the maker of the yarn, which I’d been looking up/guessing before. Hurray!

Pattern

Fall vines tablet cover. Simple and cute! The paper was so messed up that I don’t really feel like it’s worth photographing the picture, though.

Classica

Classica by Silvia
“This washable yarn is soft and shows strong stitch definition”
4.5 sts on US 8
100% Acrylic
229 yds colour: 121

This is a pleasant to work with, a workhorse acrylic yarn. Comparing with the acrylics I use for amigrumi, it’s a bit softer than Red Heart but not as soft (or splitty) as Caron super soft.

My experience with the swatch was ok as far as knitting went, but blocking had no effect on this yarn, so what you see when you knit it what you get with little flexibility. That’s ok for some applications, but as a recent convert to blocking, I have to admit I was pretty disappointed for it to have no effect.

Honestly, even though I liked the yarn, I’m not sure I’d buy it since it’s more expensive has harder care instructions than my cheap craft store yarns. That isn’t to say that it’s a bad yarn! It’s quite pleasant to use, it’s just a hard category to get a win in.

Big Hug

Big Hug by Euro Yarns
“This superwash jumbo yarn is squooshy and an easy knit”
1.25 sts/inch on US 17
50% Wool 50% Acrylic
40 yds color: 111

This yarn sample is *huge*. I took a bunch of photos trying to show how big it is, but I’m not sure I found the right comparison. The sample bag was probably more than double the size of a regular one, though!

This was super nice to work with: soft, fluffy, huge and quick. I actually wound up starting the swatch recommendation then ripping it out to create something I liked better, so I can tell you that it unknits pretty nicely.

My knit up sample could probably be used as a potholder, it’s so thick. I’m guessing it’s going to wind up as a heat pad for my teapot because we finally found the oven mitts and after months of having nothing but crummy potholders for taking cookies and cakes out of the oven, I kind of never want to use one again.

I’ve been busy doing gifts in fingering weight yarn since before this sample arrived, so the sheer size of it was a real treat. It has definitely rekindled my interest in working with some bigger chunky yarns!

Summary

Pleasant yarns to try, and I loved Big Hug enough that it got me excited about doing some more stuff with giant fluffy yarns!

Yarn of the Month Club, September 2015

November 19, 2015 by Dr. Terri

September was blue for Yarn of the Month.

The Pattern

This month’s pattern is “UTurn Scarf” which is a fun mitered knitting scarf, good for self-striping yarns. I don’t know if I’ll try it or not!

Amitola Grande

Louisa Harding Amitola Grande
“This single ply yarn is subtle and soft”
4.5 sts on US 10
80% Wool 20% Silk
273 yds Color: 516

I love single ply yarn because it can be so soft and you don’t have to worry about it untwisting or catching threads in the same way. This is soft, squishy and quick to knit up.

The standout part of it is the nice slow tonal gradient. I really love these colours and they look great knit up in the swatch too. The swatch is an odd little “knit into the stitch a few rows back and drop” stitch ribbed thing that I wasn’t too sure about when I was doing it, but it looks ok when complete and the loosened stitches go nicely with the squooshy yarn.

Front:

Back:

I can really see using this for quick knits and with the pretty colours, it’d be great for scarves. Maybe a really nice present for a beginner knitter? I can see keeping some on hand for last-minute gifts, too.

Sisa

Sisa
“Squishy, braided yarn feels oh so delicious”
5 sts/inch on US 6
60% wool 40% Alpaca
137 yds Color: 09

This is soft, dense and seems warm. I do so love alpaca! I didn’t have much trouble with the smaller threads in the braid coming loose, so it was nice to work with.

You can’t always see it because the yarn it overall so dark, but it does have some very nice heathering in there with glints of purple.

The swatch pattern is cute, if a bit hard to see because of the darkness. Really shows off that stitch definition as a texture, but the dark makes it not show up so much in photos.

Here it is front-lit:

And back-lit so you can see the holes:

This screams sweater yarn to me, since it holds up for interesting stitch patterns but is still soft against the skin. It’d probably be nice for colourwork, although it’s hard to tell without trying. I could see it making a nice hat too, but it doesn’t have nearly the thickness I want for my scarves unless it was double-knit. Still, very nice and something I wouldn’t mind using in larger quantities! Maybe this would be good for the next baby sweater I do?

Summary

Two great yarns this time! I could see buying both of these myself for specific projects, and Amitola Grande especially as a gift because of the colours. Definitely happy with my subscription for September!

Yarn of the Month Club, August 2015

November 13, 2015 by Dr. Terri

August’s colour scheme was a light lavender grey. I decided to liven up some my photos a little, colour-wise, in part because I haven’t found my light box since the move, but also because I like a tad more colour in my selections.

The pattern

This month’s pattern was for a bracelet made of woven icord that was actually small enough to make with the sample, so I did that instead of the swatch.

Maya

Berroco Maya
“Soft chained yarn with beautiful stitch definition”
5 sts/inch on US 8
85% pima cotton 15% alpaca
137 yards Color: 5650

This was soft and nice to play with. As is common with these chained yarns, I do have some trouble where I accidentally pull the individual threads and have to unknit and try again. Definitely not yarn for knitting in a dark theatre or other time when you’re not looking at it.

The pattern is a pretty cute little bracelet, made with a bunch of icord that you then weave together before picking up stitches and finishing the end. If I did it again, I’d probably leave off the side icords: they put them there so you could use them with beads, but since I don’t really like things clunking against my keyboard, I decided to leave my bracelet bare, and it was annoying to have to sew the side icords on to the center braid. I think the structural integrity would be better without them if you’re not in it for the beads.

I haven’t dug out my buttons to finish it yet (they’re still buried in some box from the move), so I haven’t worn it. I strongly suspect it’ll wind up getting used as a coffee cup sleeve more often than it’ll get worn, since I rarely wear bracelets, but it’ll be nice and thick for holding hot beverages too. Maybe I should wear it just so I have it when I need it for hot beverage purposes?

Captiva

Berroco Captiva
“Silky, slippery, slinky with a shimmer and a sheen”
4.5 sts on US 8
60% cotton 23% polyester 17% acrylic
98 yards Color 5557

They are not kidding about this being slinky. It’s a treat to work with, firm but slippery, and the swatch pattern shows it off nicely.

I can see this making a pretty neat summer scarf. It’s got kind of a loose sliding chain feeling, satisfying to fiddle with, and the whole sample scrunches and stretches in a pleasant way.

Summary

Two nice yarns and a fun pattern! I don’t think I’d buy Maya again, because I’ve since worked with 100% alpaca in this chained format and I love it so much more, but it was good to try and a nice fit for the cuff pattern. But I may pick up a ball of Captiva to make a scarf when I need something pretty for a present or something!

November 2015 yarn subscription preview

November 10, 2015 by Dr. Terri

There’s a new small yarn subscription service in town! Jimmy Beans Wool has a new subscription service they call “Beanie Bags” which is fairly similar to my existing Yarn of the Month Club subscription.

Here’s the yarn portion of both of them for November:

I’m excited about my mail, so you get a preview today that jumps my posting queue. (August and September’s YOTM posts are queued and October’s swatches are on the needles, though!)

A brief comparison

Price:
YOTM is $9.50. BeanieBags is $10.00

Contents:
YOTM is 2 (or sometimes 3) samples of yarn, with a paper including a pattern and swatch suggestions.

BeanieBags is 4 much smaller samples of yarn, some small notions or other includes, a bag, and a postcard with sample info and some links to their website. (Also this cute Small Yardage group on Ravelry for more ideas of how to use your teensy samples!)

(You’ll have to wait ’till my full review for pictures of the full Beanie Bag kit.)

First impressions

The Beanie Bag is much more polished, with the pretty printed postcard and the bag. If I were gifting a subscription to someone else, this is definitely the one! (That’s part of why I justified trying out this subscription, actually.) The little extras are a nice touch, and I like bags. I particularly like that these are white cotton canvas type material, so if I keep up the subscription and tire of having similar bags, I can always dye them.

I *was* kind of sad to get all the same colour yarns in my Beanie Bag, but having actually gone to their website that was an intentional choice specific to this month’s yarns: the yarns are meant to be mixed and knit together. So that makes more sense now, and it’s a neat new thing to try!

I’m still pretty fond of Yarn of the Month, though. I’ve gotten interesting samples from them and I *really* like their approach of “make some 5×5 swatches every month and by the end of the year you’ll have a blanket” which is a pretty practical way to enjoy all those yarns. (My Beanie Bag doesn’t appear to include explicit swatch patterns, just blending suggestions this month. I’ll figure something out from my library, I think.)

Even if you aren’t doing the swatch blanket thing, I do think YOTM still gives you a more useful amount of yarn to play with and get to know. Generally speaking, I get enough for an edging on a hat or scarf or similar project accent, so even if I wasn’t swatching I feel like this is enough yarn to use as part of the types of projects I do. (These teensy balls look good for small colourwork, but my stash doesn’t really have enough to support that yet.)

And, of course, YOTM is somewhat local to me, and a small business to boot, so I feel good about supporting it.

Summary

So far, I like both but for different reasons. YOTM walks the line of novelty and practicality so I don’t feel like I have random teensy yarn projects piling up around the house, while Beanie Bag has a polished product with more to coo over.

The plan is to do a 3 month stint with Beanie Bags and then decide if I want to choose one or continue with both, or think about it for another 3 months. We shall see!

Yarn of the Month club review, July 2015

October 19, 2015 by Dr. Terri

Apparently purple and fuzzy was the theme for July:

The pattern: Breezy Shawl

This is a cute little shawl with some little criss-cross cable going across the back in an otherwise mesh-like fabric, all see through. I might make it, but probably not with the recommended yarn.

Mongolian Cashmere

Mongolian Cashmere
“So soft and silky and lux”
6 sts/inch on US 1
100% Cashmere
400 yds color: Iris

This was my first time knitting 100% cashmere and wow. So Very Soft. This is silky soft with a little haze of fuzz and it’s a treat to work with. I’m starting to see why my friend M was so obsessed with finding 100% cashmere on the yarn crawl instead of a blend, now. At $45/2 oz, it’s pricey for a sweater, but oh, what a sweater it would make.

I’m not as big a fan of the swatch pattern on this one: it’s chunky and seems like a waste for this luxurious yarn. Plus, I had a lot leftover as you can see, so it’s really tempting to frog (unravel) it and try something that will showcase it better. I just haven’t figured out what that might be yet!

Jaggerspun Heather 2/8

Jaggerspun Heather 2/8
“Strong with an aura of fluff”
7sts/inch on US 2
100% wool
280 yds Color: Columbine

This feels nice in the ball, but I don’t like the scratchiness of it in the swatch. It’s super fluffy as promised, and probably pretty warm, though, and there’s lots of colours in the heather which makes it pretty neat up close.

This might be nicer in a stockinette or cable pattern, but with so many yarns in the world to choose from “a little scratchy” is enough reason for me not to revisit this one. Still, it was good to try it out and pleasant to work with.

Conclusion

The amazing cashmere yarn is enough to make this YOTM sample selection for me, and the other yarn isn’t bad it’s just hard for it to shine in comparison. I do wish this month’s mailing had come with better swatch suggestions, though!