Knitting and crochet blog week- A tale of two yarns

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Whoop! It is blog week again, I like this as it is a challenge to post daily without actually having to think of the topics. I did look at the topics in advance, with the plan to get ready beforehand, maybe even to write the posts. I have done nothing productive apart from think about what to do on day 5 and suffering from a lack of ideas. Anyway, I will worry about that in five days time, here is day 1.

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The topic for this is "A tale of two yarns". I have decided to go down the like/loathe, first up the loathe- It is Four Seasons Grundl Hot socks Rainbow (a sock yarn I don't love- this is a bit of a shock!)

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Actually loathe is a mean word, because even this has redeeming features- I do like the colours and the long repeats with blended colour changes. It is also soft when knitted up.

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Unfortunately it is super splitty, which makes it a pain to knit, and really fluffy which makes it a nightmare to pull apart. I had to try two patterns with this- Baana, which I went wrong with and fell foul of the "its difficult to frog element" (always check for errata!).

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Then I broke my 3.5mm needle tip and it has sat looking like this for over a year now. I think I will attempt to frog it and give the yarn to someone who might love it.

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The yarn I would least like to be given would have to be a super cheap acrylic in baby pink. Although I appreciate the uses of acrylic the really cheap stuff is just not pleasant and I am not a pastels fan.

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On to a much more positive aspect, the love. This was really tricky, I scrolled through my file of stash photos and had to say there was something I loved about each of them- the colour, the squishiness, all sorts of things.

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I had to pick one though so I went for the one with the most interesting story behind it for me. This is a handspun 2 ply sock weight. It was the first roving I dyed, the first decent yarn I spun using a drop spindle and I made it into socks- a lot of favourite things there :D. s

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I love the colours too, it is a mix of blue, turquoise, grey and green.

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I can list the qualities of my dream yarn- soft, smooth, nice colours (I am quite into semi solid brights at the minute, but this changes), a thickish sock weight, springy when worked into ribbing and machine washable as I am lazy. I will just have to keep buying yarn until I find what I am looking for, what a shame! ;)

Shop review- Bluefaced Yarn Shop

It is Tuesday, so time for another shop review (I will try to keep this up until I run out of shops to review).
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This time I thought I would do an online shop review as I figured it was getting dull if anyone was reading who is from a little further away. The website for the shop is:

http://www.bluefaced.net/
They sell directly to all countries except the US. In the US the sell through a company called wool to dye for.

It is where I bought the lace weight merino and silk that I have since dyed blue.
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They mostly sell undyed yarn and fibres, although there are a few dyed yarns ones on there in the special offers section so it is really a site for people who fancy having a go at home dyeing. There's a big range of weights and fibres to choose from.
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I know from experience that the yarns they sell are lovely as I know an indie dyer that uses them to supply her base yarns (she sent me to the website). In addition to the lace weight I have also used their merino and bluefaced Leicester superwash sock yarns, both of which are great.
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Price wise they are reasonably expensive but not unaffordable for small orders. The quality seems good so I would say they are good value if not cheap. I have also seen their wholesale prices which are quite a bit lower, but require buying 10kgs of yarn or fibre at a time (trying to work out how I can justify that).
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Delivery was really fast- I ordered very early on Thursday morning and was squooshing the yarn the next day when it arrived in the post.
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The only negative point I would put is that the parcel was wrapped in plastic that I couldn't recycle as I couldn't get the address label off. I guess that is a tough one for any yarn shop really- plastic wrapped is good as it protects the yarn and addresses need to be put on well, but I do like to be able to recycle packaging (personal whinge rather than specific bad point).
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Obviously no photo of the shop as it would be an picture of my computer, so to brighten up this post (hate to post without at least one picture) here is the lace weight again:
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It is knitting up beautifully on 5mm needles, hopefully a post about the project coming soon.