Daily Archives: March 1, 2006

The Question of Yarn

Want to see something?

post office desk full of yarn

That is my supply of sock yarn. I thought I only had enough yarn on hand to make a dozen pairs. It turns out that I can make 28. I can make 28 pairs of socks without leaving the house.

I know exactly how this happened. I tend to buy yarn for specific projects, so when I go to yarn shops I don’t buy large quantities of random yarn. To compensate, I pick up sock yarn instead. At some point, I began to seek out sock yarns that I hadn’t tried. Collecting them, if you will.* So now I have enough yarn for 28 pairs of socks. This means that I absolutely-for-sure should not join a sock of the month club. Boo. Now if I can find a sock pattern of the month club….

four spread squares

These are the test yarns for the Bed Spread: (top row) Peaches & Creme, Crosheen (heavy), (bottom row) Shine and Sugar N’Cream. P&C and the SnC are the real contenders here, the Shine (too soft) and the Crosheen (too small) are included mostly because I wanted to show you how the squares go together. So I put them through the washing machine with a pile of clothes to see which one had the best stitch definition after agitation.

spread squares after the wash

Here are the squares in the same order as before. The Crosheen looks exactly the same! If I didn’t have to make a hundred thousand squares, I would absolutely use this one. But in the end, I will be going with my original gut decision: Sugar N’Cream. The P&C came out floppier than it was when it went in, which seems to indicate that it isn’t spun as tightly and therefore, won’t wear as well. The SnC maintained its sturdy, crisp stitch defintion and original feel. Drape isn’t super important since the finished spread is going to be so monstrously heavy it won’t really matter.

As a side note, Shine rocks! It is still soft after a trip through the washer and seems to have maintained it’s shape pretty well (the squished side in the picture is my fault). I will certainly be using Shine for projects this summer!

*I still haven’t tried Trekking, Hill Country Yarns (Instant Gratification or Sweet Feet), Toasty Toes, the one that comes with a contrast color for the heel and toes (I forget the name), and sock yarn from Crazy Monkey Creations (there are MONKEYS on the label!). I love monkeys. I don’t care how much sock yarn I have, I’m getting that one as soon as they make a color that isn’t sea foam green.