Monday, March 28, 2011

A Tale of Two Yarns



This is post one of the Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2011. A week in which knitters and crocheters around the world blog about the same topic every day for a week.

Today's topic is 'A Tale of Two Yarns.'

Being the statistically-driven person I am I was stuck about what to choose to talk about so went to Ravelry and downloaded my stash into a spreadsheet. Yes, yes - once a geek, always a geek.

So - according to my statistics I have two clear favourites in my stash and I shall discuss my love affair with them.

The first yarn is Cascade 220. I do like this yarn - a lot. It is a comforting, thick yarn. It comes in every colour you need and is thick. According to Ravelry I now have 34 skeins - whoops! I gave up individually listing each colour and bunched them all together. Being a worsted weight it knits up really, really quickly so is brilliant for hats, scarves and christmas stockings...





I did buy a whole heap of it with the intention of making my hubbie a Tom Baker Dr Who scarf but I couldn't bring myself to make it. So - I have lots sitting in my stash that I am gradually using.

I find it lovely to knit with - a really solid yarn which does exactly what it says on the skein. There is a reason why it is the most popular yarn on Ravelry.

The second yarn is The Yarn Yard's Clan. I am lucky in that I live fairly close to Natalie of The Yarn Yard so often get to see the yarn at shows local to her (and me). Occasionally I make it over to her house too and get to see the dyeing in progress. It endlessly fascinates me and the colours she produces are simply stunning. They are saturated and beautiful. I joined the Yarn Club about a year ago which for a while was giving me a monthly dose of Clan - so I got to build up a collection of colours I probably would not have chosen at all. It's fun to have someone else selecting your colours for you. As you can see I have a small stash:



It is lovely to work with and just begs to be made into socks. Natalie sells them in 65g skeins which means they are ideal for buying to mix the colours. Colourwork is gorgeous with it. I have to say one of my favourite socks is a fair-isle sock made out of a very dark grey and an orange variegated. I love it - so effective. Looks like a stained-glass window: