Spring Sampler

Wow, it’s been awhile since I added into my Blog. I hope they won’t kick me out from the knitting rings. I started a new job and I’m trying to get my schedule squared away. Alas, my knitting is low on the totem pole. This past weekend we drove to my parents on the Cape. I usually like those drives because I can get two solid hours of knitting in. I’ve been slowly adding rows onto my Shadow knitted vest. The size two needles make the going slower than most projects.

I did sneek-in a bit of a different project. You can see the pictured sample swatch that I made.

Our April guild met in the Fiber Loft instead of our usual library room. Jessica Oas from Westminster Fibers provided a 'Yarn Tasting' of yarns. She brought samples of many yarns, including Gedifra, Yaeger, Nashua Yarns and Rowan. She set them out on a table with the name, fiber content and stitch sizing. There must have been about 30 samples of Spring yarns. We could select any of the samples to knit-up. Jessica supplied white tags so we could record the yarn information and attach it to that specific stipe of yarn. I used only two needle sizes of 9 and 11 since I was mostly knitting to check out the “feel” of the yarn. I must say I enjoyed this project. It was fun to try many of the new “springy” pastel shades of yarns.

There was an interesting selection to choose from. I deliberately chose some yarns that I might not normally knit with. I knit two samples with bamboo fibers. They felt soft and I really liked the last extra soft “RYC” yarn I tried.

My daughter asked me to knit her a sweater using this RYC bamboo soft yarn. (One of the other Guild members brought up a point about this yarn, one that I didn’t suffer too strongly from. Since the yarn is twisted from eight small thread it does tend to split easily if stabbed with the needle.)



For a fun textured sweater I might try this Rowan Cotton Braid.



I personally liked the Jaeger Roma yarn sample that I knit. It knit up as a smooth, soft sample. I’m not sure how I feel about the 63% Viscose content since I tend to be a “natural” fiber knitter. So all in all I like the sample to use for trying to select yarns for future projects.