First, I want to do yet another shout out to my step mom who was kind enough to track down this yarn for me and send me a skein to try out. I really appreciate it!
Every year I make my daughter a scarf for Christmas. She LOVES them. Last year I let her pick the colors for her scarf and the cotton candy pink with the variegated colored yarn was dubbed, "The Cotton Candy Scarf" and boy does it live up to its name.
This year I decided to go a bit more subdued for her and make her a Gryffindor color schemed scarf from Harry Potter. Since I never can keep the scarves a secret with her as I knit them at night while watching movies and stuff with the family, she has already voiced her approval of the colors *laugh*.
For this scarf I wanted to try a new type of yarn that Red Heart came out with called, "Team Spirit" yarn. It's supposed to, in theory, give you stripes as you knit without you needing to switch between two colors of yarn, thus saving you the need to either carry over one yarn color or cut, knot and tuck in loose ends at the end of the project (what I do). My step mom found me the gold and burgundy colored yarn and I gave it a try.
My opinion? I did not like this yarn, Sam I am.
The biggest problem I found was that the variegation didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason to when it switched colors. My husband started referring to it as the "drunken Aunt coloring scheme when what you needed was the sober housewife scheme" and yeah...that was actually pretty accurate. There was a large section of burgundy about in the middle of the skein (you can see it on the upper right in the pic of the scarf above), so I now have an extra large stripe of burgundy, some of the gold sections were off by two or three rows, etc. I actually thought of cutting the yarn and switching colors the old fashioned way, but I didn't have enough yarn (for one) to do this and for two...what is the point of USING this yarn if you have to do that? I was thinking about how much yarn I would have to knot together (since the colors switched over so uneven) or just plain waste to try and make the stripes even and I finally just gave up and knitted the skein, figuring my daughter (who lacks my knitting OCD) wouldn't care, which she doesn't.
The other problem I had with the yarn was that the colors switched weird. Sometimes you'd end up with two rows of pink hued yarn from where the red transitioned to gold and sometimes the red would just end, or stutter as it switched. Not ideal for a nice universal look to the finished product.
And while knitting along I noticed that there is not one, but two shades of burgundy in the skein, so half the burgundy is lighter than the other half of the scarf. Not pleased.
I use Red Heart yarn a lot. I love that it's made in the USA (which being American I do like to support our manufacturing) and it's normally really good quality yarn. But this stuff was just...ugh. Not up to Red Heart standards.
So, yeah, I'm glad I tried the yarn out, but I won't be using it again. For the cost it's just worth getting two colored skeins of yarn and knitting the old fashioned way.
So, break downs!
Total Cost to Make Gift: Free as the yarn was gifted to me. Thanks again, Rox!
Total Time to Make Gift: Four hours.
That was really interesting to read about your findings on the "Team Spirit" yarn. I would have thought it was a good idea as well. At least the yarn was free and your daughter doesn't care about the imperfections. It will still keep her warm!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was REALLY disappointed in it. As soon as I saw it at Jo Ann's I wanted to try it as I loved the idea of it. Unfortunately, the idea definitely didn't live up to the reality.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're right. At least it will do a scarf's job in the end, so really that's the thing that matters most.