Your Perfect Sweater....with Ysolda

I am fortunate to be a student of Ysolda Teague's on-line class

"Your Perfect Sweater"

learning to be more knowledgeable about our yarn purchases, what kind of yarn would be most suitable for the project in mind.....

It's early in the class....we introduced ourselves, looked a bit at the various sheep breeds, and today we talked about woolen spun versus worsted spun.....we talked about plies....and by jove, I think I've got it.

The sweater pattern that is the basis for this whole custom sweater project calls for a DK weight yarn....

Off to the stash to hunt for DK weight - funny, but I KNOW I have a lot of Fingering and Worsted weight yarns....but DK, let's see what I can find....

There are a lot of Rowan yarns in my stash....let's see what Rowan DK weights I have to look at...

Summerspun, Colourspun, Wool Cotton, Revive, Felted Tweed DK...that's 5!

Ysolde wants us to focus on either pure wool or a wool blend, so that eliminates Revive, so now I have 4 choices.
  • Summerspun - 50% Wool, 50% Cotton
  • Colourspun - 72% Wool, 14% Mohair, 14% Polyamide
  • Wool Cotton - 50% Merino Wool, 50% Cotton
  • Felted Tweed DK - 50% Merino Wool, 25% Alpaca, 25% Viscose
(OOOOhhhh, I'd love to try Baby Merino Silk DK which is a Superwash Wool Silk blend, British Sheep Breeds DK which is 100% British wool, Pure Wool DK and Rowan Tweed DK.  These will have to wait, I'm sticking to my stash!)

As I'd like this sweater to be a really comfy, go to sweater....casual but classy enough to wear everywhere with everything all round sweater.  I'm not asking for much am I !

I'm knitting Marilyn right now with Revive and Summerspun, so I'm not going to pick Summerspun.

Colourspun - although it is a DK, the Mohair content makes it a bit warmer than I think I want for this sweater.

Felted Tweed DK - I love this yarn - but as I've knit a lot with Felted Tweed DK, I'm going to go with....

Wool Cotton.....confession.....I  haven't actually knit with Rowan Wool Cotton before.....so let's look at it, using my new knowledge.


So here it is....it looks firmly plied....
When I unravel the end - it is 4 plies each of 2 plies

So, I'd say that this is worsted spun, it has a balanced twist, it's neither tighly or loosely spun.
It looks smooth...when you untwist the plies, you can pull fibres out of it, but not easily.

It is recommended to be knit at a gauge of 22-24 sts, 30-32 rows per 10 cm, on a 3.25-4 mm needle.

So I'm guessing that it will have a lot of bounce and memory, but I'm wondering about those little escaping fibres. Do they indicate that it will pill?

With the wool/cotton content, it should be an all-year-round sweater!  Just what I wanted.  So I'll be swatching with this for sure!

Rowan Wool Cotton, where have you been all my life!




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Bead Whimsey!

Fine Art Aran Giveaway Update!

Advent Knit Challenge - Finale