Meet the Yarn: Lucero, part 2

Do you want some sparkle in your life? Lucero takes the good parts of a superwash merino and cashmere blend and to that adds 10% sparkling stellina. If you know me in person, you know that I'm not into anything bright or flashy. My wardrobe is black, black, and more black; however, there's something about the stellina sparkle in yarns that I love. It's the understated subtly that challenges you to take a second glance. I might be bold and go on record that I find it creates fabric more luxurious than cashmere.

Lucero Swatches

The sparkle takes simple stitches--and if you'll excuse me I need to get this out of the way--helps them shine! The twist of the yarn made knitting or crocheting it a dream.

Lucero Swatches, knit

Lucero Swatches, crochet

Lucero Swatch, single crochet

Lucero Swatches, single crochet & stockinette

But what about a motif you ask, wouldn't it be garish? I think it's lovely. The stellina plays hide and seek and the result is effective. I could see accent motifs paired with Cricket. Don't worry, it's in my queue for a swatch review!

Lucero Swatch, motif

But the stellina will be too much in a heavily textured swatch right? No! I love how my stitch count and gauge combined to make a subtle shade diagonal in this swatch. Again the result is directing me to the thesaurus -- it's divine. I think the added depth of crochet texture stitches makes the sparkle more mysterious.

Lucero Swatch, texture

And lace! Oh my the lace! The stitch definition here made me swoon.

Lucero Swatch, lace

This is a new-ish yarn to the Anzula lineup so there aren't many exclusive designs for it yet, but I think you could swatch and then swap for a design calling for Cricket or a sport/DK weight. I'd be wary to work it into items that need to be hardwearing such as socks, but that's a personal preference. So what else could you make? After what I thought would be a brief spin around ravelry I discovered I'd fallen down a rabbit hole. My pattern advice is: swatch and sample potential stitch patterns. You will find a combination of colourway , stitch, and type of project that speaks to you.

All swatches are in the Sophia colourway with 3.75mm needles and hooks, any perceived differences in shade are due to the photographer.

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Penny Shima Glanz spends her days spinning yarn and code into memorable projects. Small businesses rely on her for smart technology decisions. Designers rely on her to sample, test, and edit their hand-knit and crochet patterns. She loves muddy trail runs, fosters kittens, and lives in Westchester, NY with her husband and two resident cats. www.pennyshima.com

Meet the Yarn: Meridian, part 2

Next up in my crochet explorations of Anzula yarns, it's time to turn to a lace-weight, Meridian. This blend of 55% Tencel, 35% Alpaca, and 10% Nylon arrives in skeins of 812 yards per 114 grams. The fiber combination creates a yarn that produces the best qualities of both the tencel (lightweight and slight sheen) and the alpaca (warmth, slight halo).

Meridian swatches

In my experience, Meridian is prone to splitting and somewhat sticky. These are two characteristics to think about when choosing your needle or hook and as you're ripping back to fix a mistake or start over. The hook I chose, wasn't the best choice and the lack of consistency in the blocked swatches proves that. I think a tip that is more pointed would have helped to reduce splitting and even my tension. For these swatches, the result is ok as I'm not stressing about accurate gauge. My goal for this project is to work with the yarn and get to understand it in different situations.
 

As Jill explained in her post, Meridian looks a complete mess before blocking! Be strong and reserve judgment until after the swatches dry, the result will be pretty. Even though my gauge is all over the place, the simplicity of the stitches highlights the characteristics of this blend.

Meridian swatches, knit

Crochet, by both tradition and the nature of how the stitches form, loves a lace weight. While my tension and blocking leaves much to the imagination, the fabric of simple stitches is gorgeous. Process note: this is one of the last swatches for which I did a combination of stitches in one swatch. I've found single stitch swatches work better for these explorations. My photos don't do this yarn or fabric justice. 

Meridian swatch, crochet

Comparing the knit and crochet fabric highlights the delicate beauty this yarn can create. I love the single crochet fabric and hope to explore it at different gauges soon. 

Meridian swatches, knit and crochet

Both the motif and lace stitches create fabric beautiful drape  -- the granny square is incredibly light and the lace fabric wants to drift away! The granny square is small because I stopped after I completed  four rounds, otherwise I may have continued for all 812 yards in my skein!

Meridian swatches, motif and lace

While the stitch definition during the making process leaves much to the imagination, I persevered. It should be no surprise that I am continuing my texture love in this Meridian swatch!

Meridian swatch, texture

Can you substitute Meridian for any lace weight in a crochet pattern? There will be subtle changes to the fabric you create as it will behave differently than a 100% merino or other combination. The alpaca creates warmth with a bit of loft, the tencel is strong yet light. This is why swatching to learn the characteristics of a yarn and blocking is important.

All Meridian swatches are in the Sexy colourway, any perceived differences are due to the photographer.

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Penny Shima Glanz spends her days spinning yarn and code into memorable projects. Small businesses rely on her for smart technology decisions. Designers rely on her to sample, test, and edit their hand-knit and crochet patterns. She loves muddy trail runs, fosters kittens, and lives in Westchester, NY with her husband and two resident cats. www.pennyshima.com

Meet the Yarn: Milky Way, Part 2

Milky Way

80% Milk Protein, 20% Superwash Merino
+/- 500 yd / 457 m
8.5-9 sts / in US #1

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Milky Way in Au Natural

Jill introduced Milky Way last May. In this post, I'll investigate how it behaves with a crochet hook.

What is Milky Way? It's categorized as a light fingering weight; Anzula creates skeins that are generous, about 500 yards (114g)! The fiber composition is 80% Milk Protein, 20% Super-wash Merino and it's a multi (four)-ply yarn.

This is also the first Anzula yarn I began to work with, so it is my favourite. Ok, one of my favourites--in truth I love them all. When I first saw it I knew it begged for a crochet hook. I enjoy knitting with it, but I think this yarn really shines in crochet.

While the milk protein creates quite a bit of grab when worked up, I found this yarn can be prone to more slipping than I expected. Yes, hand winding 500 yards sounds tedious, however I now recommend it. Why? I often mistreat my working yarn and it gets tossed in a project bag and while protected, those bags often get shoved into other bags. That can very quickly create a tangled mess that I've found doesn't happen with hand-wound balls. This is, in my opinion, a feature of the yarn and once I knew to work with it I no longer ran into issues. I'll post a photo of that further down in the post. It's not pretty (or fun to untangle).

The four plies of this yarn can split, but I found I was less likely to cause this with a pointed hook than a rounder one. I can attest that you can work and rework and rework the yarn again. I have a design I've been working on for almost five years that has survived a significant amount of ripping and do-overs.

What is this yarn good for? Any project where you want beautiful drape. Should you measure hanging gauge for this yarn? This will change depending on many factors from your basic gauge and stitch pattern to the construction of your project. If you are concerned, then I urge you to measure your swatch! I plan to cover a comparison of hanging gauges for different yarns in a future post (I need to figure out how to photograph them). With the high percentage of inelastic milk protein, if you are expecting ribbing to behave, I would call in some supplemental elastic to reinforce it.

I love this yarn in a half double crochet; that's my default crochet stitch though it's also lovely in both single and double crochet. It creates beautiful drape at 5 spi in single crochet. I love how the yarn takes the dye and works into crochet stitches. How does a simple crochet stitch compare to a knit swatch? I have a certain reputation as a "tiny knitter" and couldn't resist working it up on 2mm needles creating a stockinette fabric of 9 SPI. Wow. It's lovely, and the drape is amazing at this gauge.

Knit and crochet swatches of Milky Way in simple stitches: stockinette, garter stitch, single, half-double, and double crochet.

How is this in a tried and true granny square? It pops next to garter stitch. I worried the motif would be flat and lifeless. It isn't. Do be careful when trimming yarn ends after working them in, I almost nipped the motif and the wayward ends want to be in the photos.

Milky Way granny square swatch next to garter stitch.

When I created my texture swatch I discovered a new love. Because this is a light fingering weight you can play with textured stitches that otherwise might add unwanted bulk or warmth to a project. I know this will create lovely garments and accessories.

Milky Way crochet texture swatch.

This simple lace surprised me. This is the swatch where I had some issues with split stitches and a hook switch solved my problem. While this swatch is unimaginative, upon blocking my apathy to this particular swatch grew into adoration. I think it would be great for transitional and warm weather wear. The merino adds a hint of warmth without being overbearing.

Net stitch in Anzula Milky Way.

The slight issue with my slippery yet sticky yarn? Here's a nice picture of a mistreated yarn cake. I found if I wasn't paying attention to my work area and some cat fur wound its way in, the result was super sticky stitches.

A Milky Way yarn cake that had a minor mishap.

To end on a positive note, in addition to a baby/child cardigan that I hope to finalize and publish soon, based on the work in writing this post I now have sketches for accessories in textured and laces stitches. I'll try to release them soon!

Pile of Anzula Milky Way swatches.

All Milky Way swatches were worked in the Seaside colorway.