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Mystery

Thrifting yarn often means acquiring balls of yarn with no labels like this one. They are a mystery that I love to figure out, and there are plenty of clues to help me identify what weight, fiber and even the brand of yarn they are.

Take this mystery ball -- it's obvious that here's a color change from purple to aqua, and it's fairly hefty, like a heavy #3 or light #4 weight. My first guess is by feel of the yarn -- and this comes from my experience of working with many, many yarns -- it's a light worsted #4 acrylic. Because it's a fairly small ball (about half a skein) it doesn't matter to me if it's that, or a wool blend, wool or other, so I won't do a burn test.

The wraps per inch test confirm that it's a #4 worsted weight yarn.

I decided to crochet a granny square to see how long the color shifts are, and got this much done before the purple turned to aqua. The yarn is soft, easy to work with and doesn't have any knots or issues. I quite liked it.

Aqua to blue shift. As I worked with it I kept thinking this yarn feels a little familiar to me. Because of the hand, which I have encountered before in another yarn, I have a pretty good idea of what it is, but let's keep going.

Blue to pink shift. There is one more color change, from pink to rose, and that confirmed for me what I think the yarn is. Let's see if I'm right.

Yep, just as I thought: this could be Mandala yarn in the colorway Troll. According to the manufacturer this is a light weight, self-striping yarn made from 100% acrylic, designed for self striping with long, seamless color changes. One of my favorite yarns of all time is Mandala Ombre, and I've thrifted a lot of Mandala yarns with labels, so I'm pretty sure this is it.

The mystery ball lasted for almost 18 rounds, ending just short of the join. I'm going to grab some rose yarn from my stash to finished it. Not sure what I'll make out of it, but I'll add it to the finished squares bin.

Whether I'm right or not about the brand, it is a very nice yarn, and I do like the colors. It works up fast with no issues. So this mystery is solved! :)

Image Credit: the last pic in this post came from the product listing at Yarn.com.

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