Tonight I'm talking about Spring yarns and sharing a little swatching experiment I conducted when trying to find a spring/summer yarn substitute for my Castaway tee. Yarn substitution isn't just about matching gauge - sometimes you also need to keep in mind the fiber content and if the fabric it creates will work for a particular design. Keep reading to learn more!
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Pictured above is my Castaway tee, knit out of the DK-weight Berroco Quinoa, a cotton/nylon blend that has been discontinued. This is one of those patterns where I designed the piece with this particular yarn in mind. Because of the fiber content and yarn construction of Quinoa, I was able to keep the edges of this garment "raw", i.e, there's no trim (such as ribbing, garter, etc). This type of yarn allows you to knit in stockinette stitch, but have minimal rolling at the edges like you typically would have with other yarns.
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Of course you can just add trim should you use a yarn that does roll. In fact, on my tips page for Castaway I walk you through how to adjust the pattern in this circumstance. But I wanted to find a couple of yarn substitutes that I could recommend that not only would work gauge-wise but would also allow you to knit Castaway and have it look similar to the original...
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Coincidentally, I had a yarn tasting set of Berroco's new Spring 2022 yarns and they were all DK-weight! I thought this would be a great opportunity to do a swatching experiment and see which of these yarns could be good options to consider for Castaway!
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This exercise was great for 2 reasons:
1) It helped me to know which yarns gauge-wise were a good match.
2) It also told me which yarns would work well with the "raw edge" design of Castaway.
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You never know exactly how a yarn may knit up until you, well, knit it up! So this was a fun swatching experiment to see how each of these yarns (each with different fiber blends and construction) compared.
Want to learn more? Click the button below to read my latest blog post all about it!
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Are you interested in knitting your own Castaway tee? This is a simple, seamless top that's great for Spring and Summer layering. And I recently updated it to include even more sizes! Click the button below for all of the pattern details. Pattern is also available on Ravelry.
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A sneak peek of a little something new coming out next week...
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It was a cold walk the other day at Winslow Park here in Freeport, Maine but so pretty. above is a beautiful photo Jeff captured, and below is the photo I took of him taking the photo :)
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