Dye For Yarn Merino/Baby Camel yarn review

December 3, 2013 by 9 Comments

The lovely ladies at DyeForYarn/DyeForWool very kindly sent me a hank of yarn to review here on my blog.  They did not pay me for my review, so everything written here is my honest opinion about this yarn.  The yarn is their Merino/BabyCamel fingering weight yarn in the colorway Dyeing Rose (click here to be taken to their Etsy page for this specific yarn, in all the lovely colorways!).

first impressions

The yarn shipped very quickly all the way from Germany!  It arrived in a beautiful hank.

reviewhankIsn’t it gorgeous?  Here’s a close-up of the tags:

reviewtagsYou can see that this single-ply fingering weight yarn is made of 55% Merino superwash and 45% baby camel.  The hank is 100g and 480m (525yd).  These hanks are currently selling for $25.13 USD, which is a very reasonable price for the yardage you get and the fact that this yarn is hand dyed and everything.

Here it is after I used my new ball winder to wind it into a handy cake (and I should mention that there was not a single knot to be found in the whole hank):

reviewcake

working with this yarn

I knitted a hat with this yarn (more details on the specifics in a bit), and I very much enjoyed the experience.  The yarn is soft (a pleasant but not necessarily common attribute in wool yarns), and it has a beautiful, ethereal halo.  There was a little shedding of fibers during the knitting process, but it was not bad at all — it didn’t even make me sneeze and it didn’t get fuzz all over my clothes like some yarns do.  Since I used the magic loop method, I pulled the first/last stitches of each half of the hat tightly to try to avoid ladders up the sides of my hat, and the yarn turns out to be very strong.  This makes it a higher quality yarn in my estimation, since other single-ply yarns I’ve used have been pretty easy to pull apart.

the knitted product

reviewfinished4

The hat pattern is called Plume Beanie and it is free to download on Ravelry.  It has a very long ribbed edge which is meant to be casually folded/pushed on top of itself, and a lace pattern that is not too complicated.

reviewfinished2

I went up a couple of needle sizes to obtain the correct gauge, although I think I still slightly undershot it and would use one more size up if I made it again (details here on my project page).  Even so, the finished hat is amazing and the pattern was the perfect choice for this yarn.  There’s even over half of the ball left, so I’ll be able to make something else too!

reviewfinished1

the verdict

This is definitely one of the best fingering weight yarns I’ve ever used, if not THE best.  The next time I need some more fingering weight yarn, this Merino/BabyCamel yarn by DyeForYarn will probably be what I go for (perhaps in another beautiful colorway, or maybe I’ll try their other yarns, too)!  The owners Nicole and Cordula are so nice and prompt, which only adds to my desire to shop with them again.  To you dear readers I say give it a go — it’s worth every penny!

reviewfinished3

I hope you enjoyed my first official yarn review, thank you so much for stopping by!

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Navajo 3-ply tutorial is up

November 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment

There is now a tutorial for the Navajo 3-ply method available.  This method allows you to use 3 strands of 1 ball at once, eliminating the need for multiple balls of yarn when tripling up.  It works with both knitting and crocheting, and is ideal for when you have a ton of fingering or lace weight yarn that you don’t know what to do with.  Turn it into worsted or bulky yarn with this method!  To view the tutorial, you can find it under “crochet tutorials” in the drop-down menu bar, or you can

click here

Thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoy the tutorial!

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a finished cowl & other fun stuff

November 3, 2013 by 21 Comments

A third chunky circle scarf has joined the ranks of yarncrafted items in the front closet:

chunky circle scarf 3 1Yep, the pattern is good enough to make at least 3.  Granted, at least one will be a Christmas gift, but I don’t want to let go of this one because grey is my new favorite color.

chunky circle scarf 3 2This one was made with Cascade Yarns Heritage Paints, which is a fingering weight yarn.  The pattern calls for either 2 strands of worsted held together or chunky yarn, but I used the Navajo 3-ply technique to triple-strand the fingering weight yarn, making it suitable for this project.  I may do a tutorial on that if anybody is interested, so let me know!

Yesterday Chris and I went to the Renaissance Festival with a bunch of friends.  It was really fun, but I only got a few pictures.  My favorite is from the falconry show, where many raptors were brought out and flew across the audience.  This one is an eagle owl:

photo 4 (2)The friends we went with also gave me some yarn-related birthday presents which I thought I’d share with ya’ll (this is the same friend who made the yarn bowl for the giveaway).  A wonderful ball winder, which I have already used:

photo 2 (1)She also gave me a needle gauge and some needle holders, which should make things a lot easier!  Did you know that, while KnitPicks needles are my favorite, the interchangeable ones aren’t stamped with their size?  Now that’s not a problem!

photo 1 (1)After arriving home from our visit to the Renaissance Fair with our wonderful friends, we were getting out of the car and found this little girl outside with no tags:

photo 1 (3)She looks like a little pittie/lab mix, and she’s sweet as can be!  We asked around and I think she belongs to some neighbors we haven’t been able to catch at home yet, so she’s inside with us.  She’s not housebroken, she’s covered in fleas, and she was very nervous about being in a house with new people, but I pulled out the trundle bed and some washable pillows and blankets and slept with her last night.  She and our dog Zero are getting along fine, but if we have to keep her for the rest of the day we’re gonna have to give her a bath in Dawn dish soap (which kills fleas better than actual flea shampoo).  I hope she’s OK with water.

Well that’s about it for today, I think.  See you soon!

 

 

 

 

 

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done with the move!

October 23, 2013 by 10 Comments

Well, mostly.  A couple of boxes are left to unpack, but all in all I’m very satisfied with our new house.  Zero loves it too!  Here she is sitting on the daybed with my CAL blanket:

zero2That’s her “what are you doing?” face.

zero1She loves the yard so much!  I’m so glad she’s finally happy.  We threw away a LOT of stuff so it’s nice and uncluttered and very roomy inside, as well!

Today is the first day I could post because today is our first day having Internet.  I know I’m spoiled because it was very difficult going without it!  I know I must have used a ton of data on my phone…

I was busy knitting and crocheting, too!  I started crocheting a shawl:

frogged(Yep, no sheets on the daybed at the point that was taken, and yep, I love to sit cross-legged/Indian style.)  As you can see I’m unraveling it to knit a scarf — the pattern was so hard for me to follow!  It’s cheche a la sauce and it was originally in French, so perhaps that was part of the problem.  The beginnings and ends of the rows don’t match up!  I must have been missing something but I could not figure it out, and after hours of re-working and re-working it, trying to get the edges correct, I gave up.  I think I’m giving up on that scarf, too, in favor of something that will take up all 3 balls of yarn I got for that project.

My knitting has much more to show for the effort.  I finished the Bajada scarf for my friend.  It took approximately 18 hours total of very focused knitting to complete, and because of that I don’t think I’ll be making another one (after all, I can whip up a crocheted scarf in an hour and a half).  I also had to write out the pattern row by row to keep track of everything and squinting at the small print in the booklet got old real quick.  It was worth it though:

bajada3It totals at 69 inches (175cm) long and 11.5 inches (29cm) tall at its widest point.

bajada4

bajada6As you can see, I need to purchase some blocking wires.  They’re just so expensive for little wires (at least on KnitPicks, where I got everything else for relatively cheap), and I keep meaning to just go to a hardware store and get some wires cut for me.  It just hasn’t happened yet.

bajada5I can’t wait for it to dry so that I can mail it to my friend!  I’ll be back up there in a couple of weeks for the yearly Renaissance Fair but I don’t want her to have to wait that long.  I hope she likes it!

The Northern Loop cowl has been my other knitting project.  I’ve been using KnitPicks’ Billow bulky yarn and it is so wonderful to work with!  So very soft, and what gorgeous colors they have available!  I’ll definitely be repurchasing this.  This could be dangerous…  Here’s a bit of my cowl:

northernloop2I’m loving it!  The only thing that was kinda iffy about the pattern was the provisional cast on, but I looked up a tutorial on YouTube and did it easily with a length of crochet chain:

northernloop1Not as bad as I thought it would be!  Grafting it together at the end might be difficult, but I’ll just look up another tutorial for that later.

Well, that’s all the catch-up I have that I can think of right now.  I’m still editing the site so if you see anything that looks crazy (like the site title overlapping with the menu bar or something), please let me know.  I’m unsure how it will look on tablets or really large screens, but I’m trying to learn to use rem spacing instead of pixels in my CSS coding, so hopefully it won’t be too bad.

Let me know what ya’ll have been up to while I’ve been away!  I’m trying to catch up with everyone’s news!  Thanks for stopping by!

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yep, it worked; chunky circle scarf #2

October 6, 2013 by 6 Comments

In my last post I talked of how I was stressed, and how I was going to pull out a new crochet project.  Well I did, and it’s done.  It de-stressed me so much I couldn’t put it down.  Let me introduce to you the Chunky Circle Scarf 2:

chunky cowl 2 1It is a lovely, plush cowl (worked flat and seamed) from a free pattern (click here), and it took me about 2 1/4 skeins of KnitPicks Brava Bulky in the shade Tranquil.  I’ve actually already made one, but it was in January of 2012 so it was time for another!

The Tranquil shade appears very vibrant in these photos but you can see that the stitch pattern is very, very close to the Catharine wheel pattern from our recent crochet along:

chunky cowl 2 2So basically if you liked that stitch you can make this easily within a few short hours, and it’s definitely worth the multitudes of yarn it requires — it’s SO plush and kooshy — and the KnitPicks Brava Bulky is incredibly soft for an acrylic yarn.  I’d highly recommend it as it is also very decently priced!  By the way, the cowl is folded in half in the picture above so you see only 1/4 of it’s total size.

Most unfortunately I was planning to sell this cowl, but in the pattern the designer states that she’d prefer that the pattern is used for personal use only.  Well, it’ll make someone a great Christmas present!

chunky cowl 2 3I guess that’s all for today!  I’d better get to bed because tomorrow my parents are coming to help me give my new rented house a thorough cleaning before we start bringing in furniture, and I’ll need my energy!  Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

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