...and a warning :)
Caution, pissiness ahead
I picked up some Paton’s SWS - Soy wool stripes - a couple of weeks ago. While I’m not especially fond of stripes, the idea of self-striping yarn has its appeal. I have worked with one other such several years ago, Noro’s Silk Garden. I have talked about that before and though I found the stripes to be charming and the colors lovely, they were the only things about that yarn that I liked. Having played with the SWS for the last couple of days, I regret to inform you that my feelings about the new yarn are about the same.
First of all, I don’t care for slubby yarns. That’s not usually a problem, as I simply leave them to those better able to appreciate their unique characteristics. I ask you, does that yarn look slubby to you? It didn’t look slubby to me and yet there was this…
...which I didn’t notice until last night by which time I had worked up most of the first ball. And, as I knit the stuff up, there was this…
...and this.
If they were slubs, there really should be more than two of them in the entire ball of yarn. Alas, they weren’t slubs, they were knots. To be fair, they were apparently done with the intention of preserving the color flow and I left them there for the same reason. But I really don’t want knots in my yarn. Call me rigid, but I feel that my $6 entitles me to a smooth, unbroken 110 yards of yarn.
The yarn doesn’t work up badly, but it’s slow going because it has almost no twist. It’s just lots of tiny fibers bundled together. This characteristic makes it beyond splitty. I don’t usually have a problem with that - even with notoriously splitty yarns - but this is orders of magnitude worse. There’s no watching TV while working with this stuff because if you take your eyes off it for a second, you’re sticking your needle into the yarn rather than through the stitch and horribleness ensues.
I pulled this out of the stash with the idea of making a matching cowl and pair of mitts. Sadly, that’s not going to work out. Even with its issues, were the yarn skin-soft, I would proceed. It isn’t. I can’t always tell until I have worked it up whether a yarn is going to be acceptable to my skin. And there have been some surprises. Some yarns that felt harsh in the ball worked up to be very comfortable. Some that felt soft in the ball turned out to be intolerable.
In the ball, this felt slick and somewhat hard - but not prickly or scratchy. The hand of the fabric is different. When I held the fabric up to my neck, it felt as though I had been knitting with flexible emery boards - very scratchy and uncomfortable. Poop…
The fabric is attractive and the colors are nicely matched, I think. Though the ball appears to have a lot of the orange/gold, that’s only because that was the last color in the length. Most of the colors are subdued - a dull teal, a dull bronze and a dull plum. The gold is really only a highlight and while this isn’t an intrinsic fault of the yarn, it was disappointing as the overall effect is much quieter and much more masculine than I was looking for.
So my questions are these:
1. Why, when the yarn is self-striping, is it’s quality so poor? Is this a rule of some kind? My inner cynic suspects that the manufacturer believes we’ll be so taken with the colors and how they work, that we’ll forgive the questionable quality.
And…
2. Since this is not going to work for clothing, and since the lack of twist means that it probably isn’t good for anything that would get a lot of wear, what do I do with it now?
No trackbacks yet.
Try using it for something felted. A few ladies at my LYS used it to make felted bags with decent results.
I used it last winter to knit up the Nomad hat/scarf combo (Interweave Knits) and luckily didn’t find any knots in the skeins I used. Living in Alabama, I haven’t worn the silly thing yet, of course! :)
Well, I agree with Annabel—seems it would make a lovely bag!
Annabel - You know I had thought of bags but given the dubious twist of the stuff, didn’t really think it would hold up well enough for that. However, I hadn’t thought of felting it. That might be just the thing!
Thanks for the suggestion :)
Aim - And now that I’m thinking along those lines, it occurs to me that since entrelac and self-striping yarns seem to produce some interesting results, that might be the way to go!
And I desperately need a new bag too :)
Another thought would be a pillow ... but I’d felt it even for a pillow.
Charlotte - Actually a pillow is a nifty idea - but I have no need for any - or any place to put them :) Still, the notion goes on the list because it could make a good gift someday! Thanks :)
I agree with Annabel. Felt the crap out that crappy yarn. :-P
Opal - ROFL :) But I’ve decided that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’ve never been much of a felter, but if there were ever a yarn that deserved a little shaking up, this is it!
My suggestion is rehoming it.
Two years ago while traveling in OH my shawl was stolen while I was at dinner. I had it on the back of my chair, got up to go to the bathroom, came back and it was gone. It was knit from La Boheme and I loved it. I grabbed a few balls of SWS at Hobby Lobby and whipped up a quick triangle shawl so I’d have something to wear.
Not only do the colors come out muddy in the long run, it pills horridly and felts with wearing. And that’s just a shawl. It ended up very rustic and it’s ok with jeans but it’s nothing I’d show off proudly.
I don’t see what everyone gets so excited over with this yarn. It’s not even that cheap.
Holly - Oh you must have been so annoyed! Especially after losing something as lovely as the La Boheme shawl must have been.
Rehoming isn’t a bad idea and I did consider it. But frankly, I wouldn’t wish this yarn on anyone else. Trying something new is always risky and this time, it didn’t quite work out the way I’d hoped.
I’m with you on the crappiness of self-striping yarn. Noro is beautiful…colorwise…but sometimes there are twigs in the yarn! It’s pretty rough, too.
Can’t they make a nice self-striping merino three-ply? It can’t be THAT hard, can it?
Marcy - My working theory is that since the striping aspect and the colors will move the yarn nicely, why should the manufacturers use good merino? Why not use lower quality wool which doesn’t cost the manufacturer as much and is going to sell anyway. Then you can also sell the merino and you’re getting money for two yarns instead of one.
I’m also guessing that since the self-striping dye process is quite labor intensive, performing it on a nice merino would create a yarn, that although beautiful to the eye and hand, would be astronomically exspensive.
Just guessing…
