Yarn Choices
Today I want to talk about what yarns I use and why. As nearly all of my crochet work is making blankets, I go through a LOT of yarn. My blankets typically take 14 to 18 100g balls of yarn and I try to make an average of one blanket a month. That’s in the region of 200 balls of yarn a year! Because of this I have a few factors that tend to lead my choice in yarn:
Colour choice
Availability
Cost
Consistency
Taking these into account, I tend to stick with acrylic yarns, and here’s why.
I need a wide range of high contrast colours as this is what works best for mosaic crochet. Natural fibres tend to have more subtle colour tones with less contrast which, while beautiful, would mean you’d lose the impact of the design. The large variety of colours also means that every project feels very different which helps with keeping my interest and motivation up.
Again, as I’m often buying a fairly large quantity of yarn per project, I need to be confident that I’m able to buy the amount that I need and that it will be in stock. Going with acrylic usually means this is never an issue.
Cost! Given the rising cost of everything at the moment, this one is becoming more and more relevant. While natural yarns are stunning, they usually have a much higher price point. Acrylic (and often cotton) yarns are much kinder on the wallet.
And finally, I find that acrylic yarns tend to be much more consistent in weight and colours. I do always try to purchase all the yarn needed for a project up front, but sometimes the calculations are off and I end up one ball short. When this has happened I’m able to get the additional yarn quickly and with a high confidence it’s going to match the rest of the project. I would say, if the yarn isn’t from the same dye lot there is a chance that you aren’t going to have an exact colour match, but often that’s a risk you need to take. I’ve been very lucky as when I’ve had to do this the colours have matched perfectly.
Now, onto my yarn of choice. After some experimentation, I am now a very loyal user of the Stylecraft yarns. Nearly all of my projects are created using either their Special DK or Special Aran yarns. I love the softness, it doesn’t snag, I very rarely find knots and the colour choices (particularly in the DK) are fantastic!!
Stylecraft are a UK based brand but you can get their yarns pretty much anywhere. However, if you want to find alternatives that would work up in a similar way, there is a great website called yarnsub.com where you can input your yarn and it will give you a list of alternative yarns with the same or similar properties.
Finally, if you are looking to order, I can recommend Lovecrafts. They deliver all over the world and are usually the cheapest option. Although they are UK based I’ve had orders from them delivered to the Netherlands in as little as 2 days.
Disclaimer: I am signed up as an affiliate for Lovecrafts so if you do order any yarn by following the links on my site I will get a few cents from anything you order at no additional cost to you.
