“Something Good” Sunday
The lead up to what is “good” this week involves a mini-lesson on a particular brand of yarn that knitters and crocheters covet.
The name of the yarn company is Rohrspatz & Wollmeise. The company is based in Germany. I did a quick Google search on the English translation of the name and this is the explanation it came up with:
Now, to us yarn people, we simply call it Wollmeise. We don’t go crazy for this yarn because it’s soft. It’s not all that soft. Well, the basic Pure and Twin bases are not soft. They are sturdy though and very durable. Their Blend base is softer. But I digress. We don’t love it because of its texture, we throw hands over it because of the color. I don’t know exactly how they dye the yarn, but the intensely deep saturation of the colors is what draws us in. I mean, just look at this! This is a hank that I have in my stash right now:
It’s not all solid colors either:
The fact that the tag on this yarn says “Nobody is Perfect” and has an F off to the side, that means that there is a difference in color between this skein and the regular skeins in this particular colorway. So if I paired this yarn with another hank of the same color, this one would be a little bit off and not match as well.
I have MANY hanks of Wollmeise in my stash. And now, I am finally making a project with some of those hanks. I’m using the Blend base which means it’s a heavier weight than in the ones I pictured and it’s also MCN, which means the fiber content of that yarn is merino wool, cashmere, and nylon. The nylon adds strength to it.
These are the colors I’m using:
With it all, I’m making a pattern called “College Tee”. It’s basically a collared t-shirt. More like a polo shirt actually. This is a project picture from a few weeks back:
Now here’s where the “something good” comes in. Recently, I ran out of the grey yarn. I was no where near finished and didn’t have a second hank of the yarn. It’s an older colorway, so it’s not available for sale on any website. On Ravelry, you can label your stash as “for sale or trade” if in fact, you are willing to sell it or trade it for something else. This particular color of yarn is in a LOT of people’s stashes, but only two of them had it listed as “for sale or trade”. I messaged them and didn’t hear anything back. It’s tacky, and in poor taste to ask someone if they’ll sell their yarn to you if it’s not listed as such. So I didn’t ask anyone else. The people in my swap group didn’t have it in their stashes either. Or so I thought.
After a couple of weeks of trying to figure out what to do to finish this sweater, I ultimately decided to use a different grey yarn I had in my stash that was the same weight as the original. This alternate grey was not the same shade. Like, so obviously not. But it was going to be only on the back of the sweater and I figured I could live with that. It was Knit Picks yarn. Which, Knit Picks is good yarn, but it’s super cheap. It’s like Wollmeise is the yarn you’d buy at Trader Joe’s, fancy, name brand. Knit Picks is the Great Value store brand yarn at Walmart. If you get what I mean. But, I had no choice, I had nothing else. So, I knit about 20 or so rows with the Knit Picks.
And then, like a message descending from the heavens (almost), someone in my swap group asked if I still needed a skein of Wollmeise Blend in Digit because she had just found a skein in her stash and she would totally let me have it. Oh my! I ripped that Knit Picks out so fast and fired up my PayPal app with a quickness to send her money for it. It arrived earlier this week, on Wednesday, I think. I wound that sucker into a cake and got right to work re-doing those rows in the oh so luscious Wollmeise that matched the OG I started with. :heavy, satisfied sigh:
My sweater is moving on as planned with the yarn I originally planned and it’s going to come out so wonderfully! All is right with the world.
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