Dawn Brocco's Life & Design Blog

New Shop
Most of the past few days has been spent on business, part of the results of which is the Knitting Zone will soon be selling 15 of my designs as downloadable PDFs!

Typical Designing Conundrum
I refuse to run out of yarn on this new design. I only have 4, 50 gram balls and it's only gonna USE 4, 50 gram balls. How? The short sleeve is becoming a cap sleeve. I've worked it and ripped several times yesterday and today and finally have the shape right. I still need to do the other cap and the front and neck edgings, then wash/block it. BUT, maybe I'll have a photo to post tomorrow!

I will need to make a 2nd design sample though, and am cogitating about getting more Plymouth Suri Merino or using another yarn. Maybe the Plymouth Royal Bamboo? I would like similar colors, though - 2 blues, a linen color and natural, and the Bamboo doesn't come in that range.

Actually, I think a cotton chenille would be great for this design, but it needs to be worsted wt, not thick as many chenilles are. So, I've been Googling. Crystal Palace's Cotton Chenille is very nice but too thick. I could go with a regular mercerized cotton, but don't want the crisp feel. The Suri Merino is a cozy alpaca/merino blend. I think a cotton chenille will give a cooler, yet still cozy feel. I am concerned about weaving in or crocheting around so many color changes tho - every row is a separate color and it's too far to carry up the unused colors.

In a wool or wool blend, the tails can get woven in and will stay there. Vegetable fibers don't behave like protein fibers, so I'm thinking the chenille sample should be 1 color, or 2 colors if I want to change the working of the rows. OK, what IS she talking about?

The body is crocheted in one piece, no side seams, thank goodness. Ordinarily, row 1 in color A gets worked across. The yarn gets cut and now we work color B across. Yarn gets cut, and we go back to color A. Even in 2 colors, the other color won't be where we need it to be, *when working a one-row pattern*. So, either the pattern needs to change to a 2-row pattern, so that we can carry up the other color (which I don't want to do), OR we employ the *go back to the beginning of the row and use the other color*.

In knitting, this is OK, as the fabric has 2 distinct sides - one is knit and the other is purl. In crochet, the *same* stitches are worked whether on the RS or the WS of the fabric. The appearance of the back and front of the stitches does vary somewhat, but, depending on the yarn, it can be subtle enough not to matter.

I am thinking that as a chenille is not crisp, the stitches would be blurred enough by the yarn texture, so the WS and RS of the stitches won't be as clearly defined. So, I think I'll be aiming at 2 colors. It will show off the stitch pattern better than 1 color as well, which is important.

So back to yarn options. CP's chenille is out, plain cotton is out. The cotton/wool blends are nice, as the new bamboo yarns seem to be nice. Cotton tapes are nice, though pricier. Back to chenille, Webs has chenille, but rayon chenille doesn't thrill me, it leaves me limp, well, *it's* limp! But I remember Halcyon Yarns has chenille and, with hope in hand, I go to their site, whilst I dig through my catalogs looking for their yarn catalog. Yup. They have Casco Bay cotton chenille, in colors, reasonably priced. Looks optimistic.

Ah, but what was it I read recently about cotton and pesticides? (I run to google) - yes it uses 25% of the world's pesticides in it's production. Ufda. Grrr. Do I really want to support such large scale polluting of our planet? Nope, not me. Should have remembered that before. So, I spend another hour or so checking out the various organic cottons. Ends up the yarn in the weight I need doesn't review as being soft. Well, cotton needs to be plied and cabled as it's such a short fiber. the more spin and ply you add, the harder it can feel, but the sturdier the yarn.

This project doesn't need sturdy. So, back to square one. So, *soft* brings me back to a bookmarked site: Beaverslide Dry Goods. They have a new 100% Delaine Merino wool yarn, perfect wt, all natural white and I'm thinking 241 yds per 4 ozs. The design would only need 2 hanks. That's 20 bucks plus postage - the same price as the 4 balls of Suri Merino this first sample is using. Hmmmm. Serendipity? Maybe a single-color second sample isn't such a bad idea. I'd get their organic wool for this project, but it's only available in the 3-ply, which will be too thick. But I may get a hank anyway and save it for swatching other ideas.

So, this is how I can spend many, many hours - searching online a workable yarn for a design. Oh, to have a large, yet all currently-available yarn stash.....

Labels: new shops