Dawn Brocco's Life & Design Blog

I spent hours last night online looking at yarns!

I love shetland wool yarn, and I have the 2002/2003 J&S colorcard. I particularly like the 2-ply Soft Spun, which is worsted weight, but to order enough colors on kilo-sized cones (which get a better price), sends the shipping really high, especially as the pounds to dollars exchange rate is 1.8.

It's still much less than getting Jamieson's worsted wt. shetland yarn, which I think is about $6.90/50 grams! $14 for 100 grams for wool just sends me reeling. I'd try the Jamieson's aran wt. shetland yarn, but I looked everywhere and see only 1 retailer has it, in Canada. I find that interesting. Why are there no US retailers carrying this yarn? Is it, for some reason, not allowed to be sold in the US? Or is it just that no US shops want an aran wt shetland wool yarn - nah, that can't be it! There's tons, Tons of heavier weight yarns in the US market. It's also more cost-effective than the worsted wt. at approx. $8.50/100 grams US ($10.50 Can).

So, I hemmed and hawed over the shetland wool possibilities, of which there really are only 2. I even considered using the jumper wt. and tripling it, but tripled may be too thick and doubled is too thin.

So, then I considered Donegal tweeds. Tahki has it as does Reynolds. I love tweeds, but it seems dry to me and not stretchy at all - no give in the yarn, at least the samples I have. So, onward we look.

I looked up Peace Fleece again. It's very reasonable in price, especially considering the 30% mohair content. Iit's not a single ply like Lamb's Pride. I love LP, but not necessarily for sweaters. I've designed sweaters with it, as I have many other yarns, but I'm ever on that search for the perfect yarn in whatever weight and color range that I need at the moment, that isn't exhorbitant "for the fiber content". And with ALL the yarns out there. you'd think it would be easy to find what one wants - not so!

I have the PF color card and realized that some of the colors "are" tweeds. Tweeds don't show up well in short yarn samples, they really need a good length to show the bits of extra colors that are here and there, so some other colors "may* be tweeds as well, they're just not showing up in the short snippets.

And, I notice that they now wholesale their yarns - I don't remember seeing that last time I went to the site, so "that" was encouraging! And the minimums are do-able for a designer! Very encouraging.

I ordered 7 hanks of color Samantha-Katia Pink. It's a lovely deep raspberry heather. I figure I will replicate my wearing-out Old Navy v-neck raglan pullover with the waist shaping, but add a bit more ease. Old Navy's sizing runs very small, which was OK in the DK wt wool in that sweater, but won't be OK in the heavy worsted wt. for this new pullover.

BTW, I welcome feedback about yarns at any time. Part of my struggle in choosing yarns for my designs is finding a middle ground yarn that will appeal to the most knitters. In feel and cost. Again, not easy to do, so any thoughts a knitter has about any of the yarns I have used and/or mentioned is welcome! In the same vein, if you use a yarn that you love that isn't exhorbitant for it's fiber content, DO let me know what it is. You can always email me at dbdesign@ulster.net or dawn@dawnbrocco.com, if you're uncomfortable posting to my blog.

Which, btw, I have been wondering a long time why few knitters ever posts to my blog? I know it's not the most exciting knitting or design blog, especially as my personal life is still so work-oriented, not fun-oriented. And I don't have time to post lots of photos, so it's definitely more word, rather than photo, oriented, but still.... I'm wondering. You can email me privately if you wish.

Back to the mundane parts of life -
Seeing retina doc again tomorrow morning for a checkup. Not that he can do anything about it, but what I am left having to focus through in my right eye is making me nuts!! Grrrr. The floating schmootz hasn't left yet, and will take a while longer to disperse, and the eye is SLOWLY undilating, but the retina flap blob is now resembling an amber-colored abalone shell. By the end of the day I get really tired of having to look through all this stuff!

Gonna try to get some Gazette work done today as well as those edits to the new booklet - plod, plod ahead!