Yarn Review: Universal Yarns Classic Shades

This might not be my most objective review ever, because I'm so emotionally involved with this amazing yarn!  Let me tell you a story about this yarn...

Once upon a time, I loved to knit, but the only yarn I ever used was acrylic from Michael's because that was where I worked.  I thought I was getting such a great deal, first to grab the yarn that went on clearance, getting an employee discount on everything else.  SO MUCH HOMESPUN.

Then one day, I was on a roadtrip and I saw a billboard for a yarn store.  I immediately demanded we stop at the yarn store, and that was where I discovered Universal Yarn Classic Shades.  Its 70% acrylic, 30% wool so it was more affordable than most LYS yarns, and comes in such pretty colors!  I bought 3 skeins in the Tutti Frutti colorway and happily knit away for the rest of the roadtrip.
This is what I made:

When I returned home from my roadtrip, I wanted more of this yarn and I knew they didn't carry it at Michael's, so I googled it.  That was how I discovered WEBS.  And that was the first step towards a yarn stash that looks like this:

The bottom right corner is all Classic Shades!

No more big box acrylic for me, I buy nice yarn online now, thanks to Universal Yarn Classic Shades.  For more reviewy information:  This is 70% acrylic, it's no luxury yarn.  But its soft, affordable, machine washable, and comes in pretty colors.  It's suitable for pretty much any project you can think of, and its super fun to knit with.  My fiance bought me every color for Christmas last year:

Boycott The Olympics

I would like to encourage all knitters, crocheters, and people who appreciate the hard work and talent involved in the fiber arts to boycott the Olympics. The United States Olympic Committee has contacted Ravelry to request that they not use the name “Ravelympics”. While they have a right to defend their trademark (even if they are going a bit overboard), they made some extremely rude remarks including:

“We believe using the name “Ravelympics” for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work.”

I find it very insulting that they think using the names of sports to describe knitting competitions is disrespectful to the athletes.  

Oops...

I've been bad you guys.  Yesterday Webs was selling these grab bags of Tahki Cotton Classic...and I definitely bought a 50 skein bag.  I got the email advertisement at lunch and my entire thought process before and during the purchase basically consisted of "WANT".  I can't wait to see what colors I get!

So...which of these blankets should I make with my 50 skeins?

The Babette Blanket

The Mitred Square Afghan

I'm the Scrooge of Spring Time

Everyone around me is like "oooh it's so nice and pretty outside."

No.  Just no.

It's too hot.

The nightly thunderstorms make me anxious.

There is a swarm of bees camped out in the bush next to my parking spot and they dive bomb my head when I try to get in my car.

The pollen is interfering with my ability to BREATHE.

This season is not nice, in fact, I'm pretty sure it's trying to kill me.  Excuse me while I sit inside knitting mittens and waiting for Fall.

Well this is exciting!

Lately I've been complaining a lot about the clause of doom (personally I think the clause of ignorant arrogance would be a better name...but the Ravelry community is going with "doom" and hey...its shorter).   Most of the patterns I've used this year have included some variety of it.  Today I discovered that the next pattern in my queue, Lakshmi Juneja's Ethereal Triangular Shawl, has absolutely no mention about what I can do with my finished object.  This made my day.  Thank you Lakshmi Juneja!

This is the kind of designer I would like to support.  This was a free pattern, but if Lakshmi Juneja had any paid patterns on Ravelry, I would certainly try to use them for future projects.

Also...I'm super excited about this shawl you guys.  I need to finish my 2nd totoro mitten first, but hopefully I'll be casting on tonight.  It's got all these scary looking points in the edging so I'm making this my "evil queen" shawl and I'm using the Evil Stepmother colorway of this yarn.

Yay!

My first pattern (the hat shown above) is officially for sale on Ravelry and Etsy.  This morning it had its first sale on Ravelry!

Yarn Review: Plymouth Yarns Boku

This is sadly going to be my first not so positive yarn review :(  As I mentioned several months ago, I bought a massive quantity of various multi-colored yarns.  Many of these yarns look very similar to each other, but knitting with each is typically a different experience.  So as I get around to making projects with them, I've been posting reviews of my experiences.

I bought two different shades of Boku, "16 Purple, Grey, Magenta" and "17 Purple, Pink, Green".  Both projects I made with this yarn involved striping the two different colorways.  One was the linen-stitch scarf pictured above, the other was this striped cowl.  To be fair, I'm pretty happy with both of these projects (happy enough that I feel good about putting them in my shop).  The colors are very pretty.  While the finished objects are certainly not suitable for someone with a wool sensitivity, they're not overly scratchy.

However working with this yarn was a miserable experience.  It actually caused me physical pain.  I'm usually not sensitive to wool, but after a few hours of this running between my fingers it was driving me crazy.  Also all four balls that I purchased had a lot of nature in them.  When I say nature I mean dirt and various bits of plant matter.  So much plant matter in fact, that I kept having to pull little splinters out of my poor fingers (hence the actual physical pain).  No matter how happy I am with my finished objects, I don't think I can recommend a yarn that gives the knitter splinters :(

Did you know?

Today I did some research, and I learned something very interesting.

In the US, those copyright notices that pattern designers put in their patterns saying "for personal use only", or "you may not sell objects made from this pattern" apparently have no legal significance!  Copyrights on patterns/instructions for useful objects (like knitted/crocheted clothing, accessories, blankets, etc.) only cover the actual words and pictures in the pattern.  So while you may not distribute copies of the actual pattern, what you do with the items you make from it is none of the designer's business.

I find it very aggravating that so many pattern designers think it is appropriate to bully their customers with fake legal notices.  Customers who know their rights and sell the items they've taken their time to make, often even face harassment.

*An Exception: If the pattern contains a panel of color-work artwork (an example), the image could be covered under copyright.

Obviously, as a law school dropout,  I'm not a lawyer and this should not be construed as legal advice.

I wish I had like 3 more pairs of hands

I don't care if people would run screaming whenever they saw me.  I don't need to leave my house.  I would get so much knitting done I could afford to have my groceries delivered (and I could knit 3 projects while I cooked and ate with my other 2 hands!!!).  I'm just so unbelievably INSPIRED right now, and I can't knit fast enough to keep up with all the projects I'm imagining.  The most frustrating part is, I already HAVE all the yarn for the projects I want to make.  I can't even satisfy myself with saying "I can't afford that yarn anyway".  I'm being good and looking at projects on ravelry by searching the yarn I have on hand that I don't know what to do with.  So now every time I walk into my yarn closet, I'm accosted by like 40 different potential projects and I have to choose just ONE.

Do you guys wanna see some really pretty projects and patterns?  None of these are mine, they're just random people I found on ravelry, and I'm so inspired by their beautiful color choices.

Gorgeous gay pride lace shawl.  I'm planning on making this (minus that terrifyingly difficult looking edging), with my rainbow Kauni.

Infinity Scarf with a fantastic blue/green color spectrum.

Same infinity scarf pattern with bright springy colors.

Really fun faux-isle hat.  This might be my first major fair isle project.

Totoro mittens!  I'm so glad this pattern includes the mitten designer's artwork as well as a trademarked character, so I'm not tempted to sell them when I make them.  The fact that they would be illegal to sell is an excellent excuse to keep them for myself!

I may never get around to making this, but WOW!

Linen Stitch Scarf.  What a great stash-buster!  I'm gonna be making some infinity scarves like this, for some reason "infinity scarf" is such a hot search term on Etsy.

Breaking my rules

As I mentioned earlier, I've been trying really hard to not start lots of new projects when I have a bag full of wips I should be working on.  I'm also trying to make some money so I've been making projects that are meant to sell.  AND I'm trying not to buy new yarn since I have a closet so full of yarn that I no longer have room for all my clothes (seriously.  I have to space out my laundry loads over a few days, because if it is all clean at once, there isn't anywhere to put it).  This week I've been bad.  Not only have I started TWO new projects, but one of them is for me (selfish knitting!) and one of them involved buying 7 new skeins of yarn.  Oops.
But anyways...they're pretty awesome projects.  The one for me is a pair of legwarmers.  I found the most fantastically tacky pair of cable-knit clogs on clearance, and I just HAD to make a matching accessory.  The other project is a granny square rainbow afghan, since Etsy seems so fond of my first rainbow squares afghan.  Naturally, I had to buy yarn in every color of the rainbow :D If my etsy site traffic stays like this, there might actually be A LOT of rainbow items in my future.  Luckily, both of these will be relatively quick projects so I'll be back on track with de-stashing and stocking my Etsy shop within the week.

Wiping out the WIPS

In the knitting world, we refer to a work in progress as a WIP and I have a BIG bag of them....and a few other big bags of them at my parents' house.  Now that I'm all caught up on commissions (btw if you want a Link,  a Chaos Afghan, or even a Joker, I finally have time to make one), I'm starting to work through my bag of WIPS.  I've found some pretty cool stuff that I completely forgot about in there.
One thing I found was The Joker...and he's not even really a work in progress.  I'm all done knitting him, I've just been meaning to get him set up to mount on a wall.

This might be one of the coolest things I've ever knit.  It's called an "illusion knit" and its made entirely of solid color stripes.  On each stripe I follow a chart and switch between knit and purl stitches, so that when you look at it from an angle, you see the image.  I became aware of the illusion knitting technique from a website called Woolly Thoughts, but my awesome boyfriend figured out how to design the patterns himself so I can make whatever image I want.
I also found the rainbow spectrum afghan I mentioned in my last post, and I'm getting close to finishing it!  I'm currently working on attaching the 2nd to the last row of squares.  I'm really looking forward to seeing this finished.  Even though I've had a plan of how I would assemble it from the start, it's just impossible to realize the full effect of the color flow until it's all finished.  Hopefully I'll be posting back with pictures of the finished product in a couple days.  My afghans have been by far the best sellers in my shop, so I'm excited to add this one to the product line.

Rainbow in progress!

I'm finally getting closed to finished with my rainbow spectrum afghan.  It includes 49 squares with every color of the rainbow matched up with every other color.  I knitted all the squares for this while I was in Hawaii way back in August, so its about time I finish it up.  The last 4 squares are blocking at the moment, and I've joined the first few rows. I hope to get it completely finished and on the shop tomorrow!

Photo shoot in progress!

Tomorrow Niki's Knerdy Knitting will feature several new items!