Decisions, Decisions!

1 Posted by - June 23, 2015 - Knitting, New Projects, New Yarns, Sweaters

This time of the year is kind of a blast for me.  It’s the season when nice people come to the back room of the shop and show me suitcases full of beautiful yarn of every weight, fiber, and color and explain to me why I should buy it (and sometimes, if they’re good sales people, why I shouldn’t).  Some things are easy for me to say no to.  I don’t buy much synthetic yarn because there are plenty of places to get that, so why would I waste shelf space?  I can be drawn by a nice synthetic blend as long as there is a good reason to buy it (washes nicely, good for kids or blankets, special texture or colorway, excellent price – and preferably all of the above!)

However, my true and profound love is for natural fibers.  In almost any guise, rough or smooth, lace or chunky, shiny or matte, plied or singles, I can envision what it would make and how it would look.  For instance, when I saw Lana Gatto’s Feeling, a lovely sport-to-DK weight blend of extra-fine merino, silk, and cashmere, it wasn’t hard to envision a next-to-the-skin pullover to experience the utter luxury of the merino and cashmere, with some texture to show off the subtle reflectivity of the silk.  I bought several colors (some are shown here, others still to arrive)

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and chose the dark burgundy (on the right) for the Coburn Pullover, which I had liked in Knitscene’s spring issue.

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Bristol Ivy is one of my favorite designers and I wanted to try this poufy little pullover.  I’m pulling in the neck a bit and lengthening the sleeves by about 3 inches, but I love the yoke detail and the shape of the body (it matches mine), so off I went.  Here is my progress so far. You can see how the yarn is just about perfect to show off the texture of the yoke, and it’s very delightful to knit!

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All in all, I feel comfortable about this choice of yarn for the shop and for you.  Some things, however, are impossible to divine in this way, and superwash wools still mystify me.   They are 100% natural fiber but have been treated to keep them (supposedly) from felting in the washing machine. I’ve made a few mistakes in this area and so I like to test things before they hit the door of the shop and I start recommending them.  A very popular yarn is 128 Superwash, a bulky yarn from Cascade.  It feels and looks really lovely in the skein, but I’ve been a little unhappy with the way it holds up once knit.  A pair of sample mittens that just hang in the shop and have never been worn look kind of ratty.  So when a sales rep showed me Ella Rae’s bulky superwash, I decided to take a good hard look.  Ella Rae’s colors are good, but it doesn’t have the soft hand and therefore the shelf appeal of 128.  Pricing is about equal so that wasn’t a decision point.  I had to do a test!

I knit up the ball of Ella Rae that the rep left me.  It knit easily and pleasantly, the texture of the swatch was well-defined.  It felt quite woolly, which pleased me but also worried me.  Just how well would it wash?  I decided to give it one heck of a test.  I threw it into the machine with a load of jeans and let it go through the whole cycle.   It came out looking great.  I wasn’t convinced.  I threw it in the dryer with the jeans and let it go through the whole cycle.  This is how it looked when it came out:

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A bit of fuzz, about 1 inch shorter than it had been to start with, but completely unfelted.  The fabric still stretches and rebounds, the stitch definition is great, the swatch retained its shape.  I was thrilled.  This yarn had gone through a washing that only a well-meaning husband could perpetrate and survived very well.

To be fair, though, I had to do the same to the Cascade yarn.  I knit the exact same swatch on the same needles in 128 Superwash.  I waited a couple of weeks until I had another load of jeans to wash and in it went.   It came out of the washer very fuzzy and felted already.  I tossed it into the dryer without much hope.  This is the way it looked when it emerged:

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The lengthwise shrinkage was about the same as Ella Rae, but the fabric’s integrity was very compromised.  It felted a lot, the stitches flattened and pilled and the swatch misshapen.  Here are the swatches side by side.

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This is now an easy decision for me.  This fall you will have lots of wonderful colors of Ella Rae Superwash Chunky to choose from, and I hope you’ll make a beautiful cardigan that you can be sure will last and look good for many years!