Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Cotton Yarn Madness

Oh my poor poor knitting blog has been so abandoned. But don't let that make you thin I've abandoned knitting. Far from it, I've been learning to adapt to knitting in a whole new way. Let me explain...

Over a year ago, I decided to move from New York to South America. Don't ask me why, it was very 'by the seat of my pants'. I've been travel blogging faithfully this whole time if you'd like to read up on that adventure. My travel blog is "Aventuras de Abril".

Knitting here has required some... adjustments. I came expecting beautiful hand spun alpaca to be coming out of my ears, and that does exist, just not where I live on the hot humid Pacific Coast. For all that loveliness you have to go venturing up into the mountains where the llamas live. Finding anywhere that sells yarn at all has been an adventure in itself.

The closest city to me is La Libertad, a one and a half hour sticky bus ride north. For the majority of the time I've been here, I've only been able to find one cotton blend. It's a fingering-weight made up of 4 2-ply strands held together. It's super cheap, and comes in a million colors. It is the ONLY yarn EVERYONE here seems to sell. That's been all fine and dandy, but after a while, you start to really want something with some more stretch and bulk to it. Last weekend, a yarn miracle occurred and a fabric store in La Libertad decided to actually start carrying some machine spun wool acrylic blend! The fact that I'm so excited about that should let you know how dry the yarn well is around here. And I'm not even sure what it is really. It doesn't feel like 100% acyclic, and it is definitely not 100% wool, so I'm going with that it's a blend. None of the yarn around here is labeled with a company name, a yarn-weight, yardage, nothing, so it's all guess work. I bought 10 skeins when I was there out of fear that they would sell it all and not have any yarn at all the next time, which would not be surprising considering my experience yarn shopping thus far.

So what can be done with the ubiquitous cotton fingering weight yarn? Well, I've tried to be as creative as one can be in a one-yarn town:
Lace Beret: The lace blocked well, but the lack of stretchiness in the cotton made it keep falling off my head after a couple weeks. Gifted to a friend with a bigger head. 

This one came out nice. Wavier edge then I'd like, but good. Started to turn yellow (fault of the yarn? Don't know), so stopped using it.
Nice, but again trouble with the ribbing holding it's stretch.

Very nice :) Color work seems to be the way to go with this yarn.  Makes for a totally smooth fabric.

Decided to stick to the technique I know works with this yarn. More colorwork! And isn't my model adorable :)

I discovered in the last couple hats that the yarn makes for a good soft fabric for slouchy hats, which I love.

I thought it would work, but... meh.

Total disaster. I was realing missing working on a nice lace pattern shawl, so I thought I'd see how this cotton stuff did. Not not good. Constantly curling, refuses to hold it's blocking, and the completely solid colors make it super boring.

OK... this yarn curls too much for my taste.

I've decided this is where it'll have to stay for now with this yarn until I find something else to knit with. Colorwork, and slouchy hats. My favorite anyways, so why mess with it

So my monogomous relationship with this cotton stuff is about to end, and I'm super excited. It's like discovering that there are more ice cream flavors in the world then just vanilla! But I have to say, I don't think I did too bad considering my selection of fiber!


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