When I walked into the yarn section of Spotlight a few weeks ago, I picked my skeins by based solely on colour. My soya yarns were vibrant, soft and alive. I really loved them, and I need a few more colours for my punk bunny. Unfortunately, I grabbed these skeins far away from home and my local Spotlight and Lincraft didn't carry the same yarn. I checked both. I also went to Morris and Sons (formerly Tapestry Craft) and blushed at their prices. If I remember correctly, I had the same deer-in-headlights look when I first walked into a proper quilting store.
So I slumped back to Lincraft and gave myself permission to buy colours that I loved a little less, as long as they were cheap. I remembered reading Elisabeth Doherty's Amigurumi book that acrylic yarn was best for softies, so I grabbed three skeins to give it a try.
Much to my surprise, this stuff hooks up in no time. I was on the train last night and I had only scrawled the bunny ear pattern in my notebook. So I set out to make extra ears. I wanted to see how this yarn worked. Although it feels terrible to touch initially, I love the stiff formed results I got. Again, I'm not big on rules and only had hook that said "8" with me, so I decided it would be right for my experimentation. Shunning rules is how I learn. What if I use a different hook? What if I use a different yarn? I was surprised what a difference it made. My 100% acryclic yarn rarely split. My soya yarn was a constant struggle to keep the threads whole as I pulled the hook back through. My soya yarn is soft and cuddly. My acryclic yarn is stiff and holds it's shape without any help. They're quite different and quite terrific in their own ways. I have so much to learn about crochet. I have gauge circles to make and patterns to try, but I'm kind of liking this experimental stage.
I joined Ravelry to catalogue my yarns and projects. I'm not quite sure why or how to use it best bet, but if you're there let me know and I'll add you as a friend. I'm listed under Badskirt.
Happy hooking!
I bought some Soya yarn from Spotlight to make baby hats with, but every time I tried to knit with it that yarn kept snapping. I was really disappointed.
ReplyDeleteI'm a member of Ravelry and I didn't think much of it until I went to a blogmeet and spoke to some people who are REALLY into knitting. They love it. Since then I've poked around a bit more and found free patterns, wandered onto the forums and asked questions (and got the answers too!) and so I think that if you take the time to figure it all out it could work out to be a really handy resource.
I can't find/get any wools here suitable for this work so I use crochet cotton for my animals.You need to use a smaller hook and they do sometimes come out a bit smaller than the desired size but that doesn't faze me. The smaller the cuter I think. You could give that a try sometime.
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