“Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.”
Today I’m going to talk about two of the three yarns I’m using for the “H” in the “You Are Chosen” yarn square. These are yarns which I’m holding together and knitting in garter stitch, and all three of them together match the gauge of the Lion Brand Jiffy I’m using for the background. Both of these yarns have come from my stash, and both were sitting around for a long time, waiting for an appropriate project. They were both picked up ‘on spec’, because they were cheap and intriguing. Other than that, they don’t have much in common.
Yarn 1
I picked up this ball of Lion Brand Trellis long enough ago that I can’t recall which chain store I bought it from, probably before I joined Ravelry even. I remember that it was a good sale, and I grabbed a couple of yarns just because they were really cheap. I chose this one because of the ‘shiny’. It’s pretty, but to be honest it’s not really something I’m likely to wear. So I’ve used it here and there for a bit of trim on something, and the only issue I’ve had with it is that my needle occasionally catches in the ladder. Not a show stopper by any stretch of the imagination, but it slows knitting down just a tad. I picked it for this project because I wanted to add a little bit of ‘bling’ to the letter, and am happy with it. I expect there will be enough left over that I’ll keep using it for contrast. I wouldn’t mind picking up another ball sometime, but only if I had a specific project for it.
Yarn 2
This is a bit of mystery yarn I got about two years ago at a church fundraiser. I was looking for something to round out my days buying (I’d gotten an adorable handbag, but thought I should contribute a little bit more), and didn’t find anything I really wanted. It seemed like a nice, innocuous half ball of some unknown yarn. I thought the nice, quiet gray would work well in something, and it was soft, and fuzzy, and pleasant enough. I took it home and did a little bit of research on how to identify “mystery yarn”. I thought (and think) that it is probably an animal fiber, but really didn’t want to chance the ‘burn test’ if it might be synthetic. I mean, I’ve smelled burnt plastic before, I don’t have to do that again. So I put it aside, I figured I’d get to it eventually. Finally, I picked it up to try a swatch… and found that it had been cut into little lengths. As in a large part of the ball had been cut into snippets of less than a foot. Pretty useless, really. But I didn’t want to trash it, so I just tossed it back into the stash bin. I pulled it out for this project thinking that it will be a small enough bit of work I can stand joining yarn every few rows for just a while. I figured that sooner or later I’d get to the end of the chopped up portion, so I pulled out lengths and wrapped them together. Now I’m down to the actually ‘balled’ portion of the yarn, and, although there is nothing else wrong with this yarn I’m just hoping I’ll use it all up in this project.
Blog Contest News
I’ve entered a drawing for a mystery prize from Royal by Grace (deadline April 1) and Dolce Handknits from Knit a While (deadline April 2). I did not win the Knit 1 Blog 1 sock yarn.
