As a young, Australian male knitter, I must fully admit that I have not yet had the pleasure in trying out a lot of different yarns. That isn't to say that I haven't had the chance to work with a few luxury yarns over the years, but on the whole, I have to keep my hobby on the cheap. So I'm going to tell you about a couple of yarns that I am dying to use, rather than just go through my love affair with the many-coloured balls of acrylic in my cupboard.
In fact, most of my experience with knitting has been with acrylic, but I'm more than happy with that at the moment. It suits the winter here really well, as it doesn't keep in as much of the heat as animal fibers do, and it doesn't need to in all honesty. But there is always just that little something missing, something that just adds that little bit of oomph to other projects.
Regardless, I definitely don't agree with a lot of the yarn snobbery that goes on these days. I suppose it's because I am much more of a process knitter. I could knit with twigs and shredded plastic bags, and I assure you that I would find it equally as pleasurable as knitting with the finest cobweb Shetland there is on offer.
So onto the fibers I am really eager to try. First of all, I am so keen to get my hands on some Shetland wool. As some of you might know, I recently received my copy of Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting from Amazon, and I am really keen to start on some of the designs, however, I would love for my first fair isle to be done in a fairly decent fiber, such as Shetland. But there is so much more that you can do with it, just looking on that web page gives me chills. I would definitely not say no to a box of Shetland wool of any weight coming to my door.
The other yarn that I would really love to have a shot at would be Shelter by Brooklyn Tweed. I love the idea of an all-American old-school production yarn, and the colours seem so amazing just through the Internet that I can't imagine what they would be like in real life. Not to mention that they would work really well with all of Jared Flood's patterns, which is a huge bonus on that.
Sorry about the lack of photo's for this post, I linked to most of the yarn manufacturers because I didn't want to steal their own photos. Vowing to double the amount of photos in the next blog. :D
x peace folks
I'd really like to try Shelter, too. The story behind it really appeals to me, not to mention all the beautiful tweedy colours!
ReplyDeleteI use a lot of acrylic to. But I do it because I am a college student so splurging of expensive yarn leaves me feeling guilty for days. Even though I do have that lovely bamboo yarn(I wont use it) Good luck on your Fair Isle knitting XD
ReplyDeleteI'm not much keen on the yarn snobbery either :(
ReplyDeleteI gotta agree, Shelter looks amazing but I have yet to try :)
A dude knitter! There should be more of you. I'm with you on being able to knit with anything--I usually find the expensive yarns to be disappointing. Cascade 220 is my bread and butter.
ReplyDeleteIt's always a bit hard to get shelter without a credit card in australia, which is always a bit of a bummer :( but when I am stateside in December, I am definitely going to indulge in a few (dozen) skeins.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, that doesn't meen to say that I won't abandon my acrylic, it's definitely my primary knitting fiber as it is pretty cheap, and a whole lot better than what it used to be. Plus, I could knit a sweater that I would happily wear with acrylic for the price that I could only get a couple of balls of the fancy stuff.
^^ thanks for all the comments folks, it does a young man's heart good to see some.