New Yarn Alert!
Guest blogger today: Tanis, our esteemed Yarn Coordinator. (You know you want that job.) Who better to discuss the latest yarn arrivals?
Bloggers, meet Riverstone. Riverstone, meet the Bloggers.
I was lucky enough to have Dave at Louet Sales send me a few skeins of Louet’s new yarn, Riverstone, to play with. Dave had told me that this yarn was perfect for felting, but after living in New York for 5 years, I have become skeptical in every sense of the word. How many places do you walk by in NY claiming they have the “Best…”? Seriously, can 7,000 places all have the best cup of coffee? I don’t even drink coffee! The Best Pretzel? They all taste the same!
But Dave was right. This yarn is amazing! If you’ve been looking for the perfect felting yarn with a plethora of colors, look no further! While I am not a Felting Queen, I am definitely a Felting Lady-In-Waiting. I love me some felting. My biggest problem is that I like to do color work with as many colors as possible. Who could forget the Knitting Olympics Nordic Mittens of 2006 or perhaps the Fair Isle cardigan I knitted when I should have been studying for finals in high school? It’s tough to find a yarn out there that felts really well and has over 10 colors that have a big difference in shade and tonal value. Riverstone has 28 shades–enough to keep even me happy!
Pre cast-on I wound up the hank of #48 and got an arm cramp. There’s some serious yardage going on: 193 yds per each 100g skein. Anything that leaves you tired after winding it up is a sure sign of plenty of knitting heading your way. Here’s the swatch, unfelted:
Michelle was kind enough to share her secret felting formula* with me last year and it’s helped a lot with how I felt. I learned pretty quickly when I knitted up some swatches in the past and threw them in the wash that felting tends to make your swatch shrink more vertically than horizontally. Sometimes you get weird, uneven felting. I really liked how Riverstone turned out post washing machine. I only had to run it through the washing cycle once, and it came out even, retained full color
and when my famous dog got hold of it, she seemed to enjoy it as well. It also wasn’t scratchy when I knit it up like some wools can be.
I can see making a beautiful Fair Isle bag out of this or perhaps a fancy hat.
Riverstone gets 2 thumbs up from me. Now go out and experiment with some felting!
* Michelle’s secret felting formula isn’t really so secret, but she’ll share it with you tomorrow just the same.