COLUMN: EVERYTHING I’VE LEARNED ABOUT YARN
Yarn comes in a wide range of varieties, and one man who knows all about this is our digital editor and yarn reviewer Matthew Spiers
Having written the Simply Crochet yarn reviews for the last two years, I’ve been lucky enough to get my hooks into almost every type of yarn available – from headline releases to some really quirky fibres. Along the way I’ve learned some important lessons about matching the right yarn to your project, and the surprising impact yarn fibres and strand style will have on your completed work. Here are some of my top tips!
FIND WHAT WORKS FOR YOU
If you’ve got the crochet bug, then you’re probably already amassing a fair-sized yarn stash. But every stash includes a few balls or skeins of ‘special’ yarns – those one-off impulse buys from the yarn store where you fell in love with the colours or texture. For me these special yarns are mostly made up of luxurious fine-weight yarns and interesting fibre types – but unfortunately it’s not always easy to actually find a use for them. While sock and lace yarns are a favourite choice for knitters, for crocheters they can often turn out to be frustratingly fiddly to work with. The reality is you probably already know what sort of yarn weight is your favourite to work with (for me it’s a DK yarn with a 3.5mm hook) – so when are you really going to use that mercerised 2ply cotton you’ve been holding onto for years? But I’m not going to tell you to stop buying those special yarns, instead I recommend that before purchasing, try to think about what other yarn you can combine it with. Working two strands of different yarns together can create really interesting results, as can using contrasting yarns for edgings and embellishments – don’t be afraid to mix things up a bit!
THE HALO FACTOR
And it’s not just glittery yarns that can be problematic. The halo is an important consideration when it comes to choosing yarns (the halo being the loose fibres or ‘fluff’ that you can see on a ball of yarn). While these may look lovely and feel super-soft, when worked up they can bind and felt together, especially with real wool and other natural fibres. I’d always recommend that as well as doing your tension swatch, also try undoing the swatch as well to see how easily you can unravel the work. There’s nothing worse than when you realise you’ve made a mistake halfway through a project, but can’t go back to that point because the fibres are matted together. If you’re working on a particularly complicated project, usually a super-fluffy yarn isn’t the best choice for the job – unless you like to live dangerously...
NOT ALL THAT GLITTERS IS GOLD
My own personal yarn stash contains a lot of sparkly metallic and sequin yarns – perhaps I was a magpie in a previous life! But over the years I’ve realised that as much as I love their appearance, they’re among some of the trickiest yarns to crochet with. As anyone who’s worked with metallic yarns will know, it’s tough to create defined shapes with it, and the fibre construction often used with metallics can mean even your stitches don’t come out neatly. Splitting can also be a problem. But don’t fret all you sparkle-lovers, as there are a few ways you can make the most of glitter yarns. Chainette style glitter yarns are a fab way of hooking up some shiny crochet without feeling like you need a magnifying glass – the construction helps to shape the fibres into a more useable and uniform weight. Finer metallic yarns work really well when hooked together with a more standard-weight yarn of the same colour – you’ll still get that glittery effect but in half the time than if you were using the glittery yarn by itself!
DOUBLE OR QUITS
Even if you’re trying to be wise about your yarn purchases, there’s always going to be that one skein you fall in love with and buy even if you don’t have a plan for it. That’s all part of the love of yarn, but if you can afford it, always try and buy two skeins of that special must-have yarn. Having more than one skein will hugely broaden the range of potential projects available to you so you’re far more likely to use it. Plus, paying twice the price might make you think seriously about whether your yarn is a realistic choice for crocheting with.
If this advice has come too late and you already have plenty of those single skeins languishing in your stash, I’d strongly recommend having a sort through every now and then. Not only will you remember all those yarns hidden at the back that you’d forgotten about, but it’s also a great way to push yourself to try something different to make use of them!