Definitely Darn Good

When I got out this skein of silk yarn from Darn Good Yarn to test the fiber I went through my memory files to recall if I've ever crocheted with silk before now (I believe so, around 2004. I was experimenting with a lot of fibers back then.) As I recall I made one wrap out of recycled sari silk yarn, and I did love the colors yarn, but it was a bit nubbly.

This sport weight silk yarn is not nubbly or stiff at all. It has a wonderful texture and glides through my fingers like silk (of course!) The colors are vibrant and the changes are lovely. There's this little blip of orange between the yellow/gray and pink/gray sections that I find utterly charming.

It works up fast, too -- this is how much I was able to crochet in about an hour. I usually avoid yellow and pink yarns, which in the past were unhappy memory trigger colors for me, but thankfully I've gotten over myself and no longer avoid any colors. I like how this yarn is working up, too. I'll probably keep going until I use up the entire cake.

The colors remind me of Birch State Park, a place we went to when I was a kid for cookouts on holidays. There was what seemed like an endless forest there that I traipsed through looking for animals and bugs, and the bright Florida sunshine on the palmettos and pines with all the wildflowers looked a lot like the colors in this yarn. Good memories for once!

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On the Beach

Last week my guy and I went to walk Daytona Beach, which was mostly (and eerily) deserted. This is what our beaches used to look like when I was a kid. It was a beautiful day, cold and breezy but calm. It feels like 2026 is getting off to the right start.

Eight Plus Numbers

When I was looking up the retail on the small lot of yarn plus a tapestry kit I got a lot of surprises. This Red Heart Roll with It Sparkle skein in "Diamonds" was actually a cake that sells $10.99 on Yarnspirations. The lot included two Red Heart Super Saver Jumbo skeins, which retail for $8.99 each, and stuck in the center of the buff color I found a 5.5 mm crochet hook. This is a skein of 100% Icelandic wool, which can be really expensive. It's marked with a price tag of $7.00, and I found it selling for $8.00 online. The needlepoint kit is the biggest surprise of all. It makes a pillow, and hails from the UK, where it sells for £45.00 ($60.76 US). Since it's flamingos I definitely have to finish it if I can. Altogether my eight plus lot retails for $125.04; I paid $21.30 total for the lot with the buy-it-now option and one penny shipping. I indeed got a very nice bargain.

Not So Cheerful

Since I finished the January crazy-quilted tote for my calendar project I jumped back on making the Iris throw, working this time with Bernat Giggles in Cheerful Blue. From the start this skein seemed determined to give me trouble, not anything cheerful, as I had to contend with a big knot of yarn I tugged out along with the center pull strand (I didn't take a pic of that.) This yarn is 90% acrylic and 10% nylon, and come in a 3.5 oz. skein. Not sure why they added nylon to the acrylic, perhaps to make it softer. The color is nice, and it's fairly smooth, but it also splits easily and wants to pucker, pop and untwist, especially when you tear out stitches. Naturally I had to tear out two and a half rows to correct two mistakes, which aggravated me because the yarn was untwisting when I went to crochet it again. To add icing to this terrible cake, I ran out of the yarn on the final row. To keep the symmetry with the other sections I had to pull a compatible color fro...

Thrifty Crochet

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