Whilst I learnt the art of knitting as a child, it's only in the last 3 years or so that I have developed a real passion for it. In that time, something has become quite obvious: I'm a complete sucker for novelty yarns!
The first garment I ever knitted was in Sirdar Ocean, a ribbon yarn. I loved working with that yarn because it's fairly forgiving and the result was so good that the cardi that was originally meant for me ended up as a gift to my mum. And when she got it, she just assumed I'd bought it until I told her I'd actually made it, that's how good it looked! For a first, I can say I was pretty chuffed with myself! This has paved the way for many experiments with novelty yarn, some more successful than others.
Rico Design has got me hooked as they release a new fun yarn pretty much every year. The first time I went to the Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace, their pompon yarn was all the rage and I have used it to make a number of Christmas gifts.
In the past couple of years, they have released the CanCan and the Loopy, both of which knit into a fun frilly scarf. You can see an example of the knitted up CanCan in the image at the top, in green on the left, and the Loopy, in pink in the middle. There are many knock offs out there but as you can see from the blue-green scarf on the right in the image above, the result isn't always as pretty!
The good thing about these yarns from Rico Design is that you only need the one ball to complete your project and you don't need to be an experienced knitter either as the whole project is in simple knit stitch, no purling required! If you were interested in starting a Rico scarf, I strongly recommend watching the video tutorials from Hulu Crafts.
Recently, my friend Jemma introduced me to another kind of novelty yarn, the Wash & Filz It from Anchor Style. It's a yarn that you knit and then throw in the washing machine for felting.
It took me a while to decide what to make from the one ball Jemma gave me but eventually I settled on a mug hug. I know completely pointless, but hey, why not?! At least I won't burn my hands on a hot mug of tea anymore :-)
Next, I plan to make a pair of slippers but first I have to figure out how big I need to knit them so that they're the right size when felted!
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