Choosing the right yarn

In our last blog post, we introduced you to one of our favourite sustainable yarn producers, Garthenor, chatted all about their gorgeous sock yarn, Snowdonia Sock and did a little project planning to get the sock inspiration flowing! If you missed that post, you can catch up on it by clicking here.

Today, we want to take a look at another of their yarns; Beacons! This DK weight yarn has been a firm favourite ever since we introduced it into the webshop, and there's a good reason for that.

In the Autumn of last year, we permanently introduced a selection of carefully curated, sustainably made yarn to the webshop. Our aim for selling yarns was simple; we wanted to bring you an opportunity to shop beautiful yarns with the confidence of knowing they were sustainably produced. We wanted to take all the guesswork out of knitting sustainably for you, knowing we'd done all the research for you!

When we were thinking of yarns we'd like to sell in the webshop, one name came up immediately; Garthenor.

Get comfy friends, because today we're tackling a pretty big topic, and one that we've been wanting to write about for some time - Substituting Yarn.

While it's lovely to be able to use the suggested yarn, there are lots of reasons why you would choose another.

Have you ever excitedly cast on a project with your new yarn and a good few inches into it you realise the stitch pattern just isn't showing up the way you would like and aren't sure why. It's because this particular yarn doesn't have good stitch definition.

 

When it comes to the final fit and feel of a garment, there are lots of factors that come into play, but one that always seems a little elusive is drape. Drape can feel a little tricky to get your head around, but it's actually quite straightforward and we're going to break it down in this post. Getting to grips with what it means and, more importantly, what it means for your knitting, can help you reach the ultimate goal; a sweater you love!

Over the past months, we've talked about gauge here on the blog. Hanna Lisa started us off with her fantastic post 'Getting Gauge', and last weeks post 'Swatching for Success' talked about how to get the most accurate gauge measurement from our swatch.

But what if you've read everything you need to know about gauge, knit a lovely big swatch that you've carefully blocked and measured, and still the fit is off for your new sweater? I know, super frustrating!