Robin: It sure is a shame Batman. All this terrific yarn, but it sure is full of vegetative matter, someone could get injured.

Batman: Look at it this way, Robin. That yarn may not make a great Simple Knitted Bodice, but it sure will felt up nicely.

Robin: Gosh yes! You’re right Batman. All this yarn sure should become a felted bag.

Batman: Good Thinking Robin!

Ok – back to reality! In my last post I mentioned that my Karaoke yarn arrived the other night. Since then I have swatched it up for the Simple Knitted Bodice and taken some notes. As you can tell from the title of this post – this yarn is full of VM. I picked it out of the yarn as I was swatching and I am still picking some out. It is very sharp and poinky. I’m not so sure a garment can be considered sexy if you are being poinked while wearing it. (Guy: Wow Babe, you sure do look hot in that SKB! Girl: Thanks, I feel hot! Guy gently lays hand on the small of her back. Girl: Ouch! Oh! This thing is Poinky me! Get it off, get it off! Guy: Whoa, Babe, not so fast, we’ve barely just met! {see – not so sexy! Ok, well, there is an alternate ending, but this is a PG blog}) The yarn itself though is actually pretty soft and nice to knit except for when you get jabbed with the vm. Maybe this would be easier if I just listed its qualities rather than babble on endlessly:

Yarn:

Texture: The yarn is sort of tweedy – the soy fibers are long with little clumps of wool reminiscent of silk noils. This is also similar to the Karaoke Top that has clumps of wooly material mixed in with the longer silky soy fibers.

Feel: The yarn is very soft – doesn’t seem to be scratchy at all.

Gauge swatch: I knit my swatch on size 7 needles. Prewashing my gauge was 19 stitches for 4 inches and postwashing it was 18. I think it would be no problem to get gauge for SKB by going down to size 6 needles.

Drape: The drape of the fabric is actually really nice. I’m just not sure that it is the appropriate drape for the SKB.

Overall appearance: Not as silky as I would have liked – I think the SKB needs a bit more shine to it.

Color: The solid mermaid color (don’t let the color on the screen fool you – in real life the solid mermaid is actually turquoise) is not a companion color to the Multi Mermaid colorway. When I spoke to the customer service rep at Yarnmarket, she went out to the warehouse to see if there were any solids that matched and she said that plum was the closest.
Last week I also spun up a sample of Karaoke Top to swatch.

Top:

Texture: The Top is a bit more silky than the yarn – it has some spots which are rather wooly, but they are not very common. VM was rare.

Feel: More silky than the yarn. The resulting yarn has a cooler feel to the touch.

Spinning: I had a difficult time keeping my consistency. I was a bit disappointed with the quality of my spinning, but I am going to chalk that up to lack of practice. Even though the title of my blog would imply that I spin like a maniac, I haven’t really been spinning too much this year. I think good spinning results from experience and practice, and well, I just need a bit more of both.

Gauge swatch: I spun singles with about 20 wraps per inch and then spun them into a 3 ply yarn which resulted in 10 wpi. I swatched on size 7 needles which resulted in a gauge of 4.5 stitches per inch (18 stitche/4 inches). If I were to make this yarn for the SKB, I would try to make my singles a bit smaller – perhaps 22 to 23 wpi and I would add more twist to get the final yarn to be a bit shinier.

Colorfastness: I could have also titled this post: “Holy color leaching, Batman!” When I washed my yarn – on the first rinse, the water turned a deep purple. Took quite a few rinses to get the water to be clear. I did a final rinse with white vinegar in hopes that it would be helpful in setting the color.

This is all starting to be pretty long so stay tuned for the next episode when we will learn (hopefully) what the heck yarn WILL Spincerely use to knit her SKB. The answer is getting closer, I can feel it!