Friday, March 13, 2009

ooh, samples

Any time yarn shows up in the mail, I'm a happy camper. Here's what came the other day.



This is yarn from Cestari Farms, a farm and mill in Virginia. From left to right, it's Flecks, Traditional Wool, and Fine Merino, all worsted weight. Flecks is 90% Fine Merino, 10% Rayon--dyed with acid dye, the rayon will stay its present colors while the wool takes the dye, so the resulting yarn will be interestingly speckled. The Traditional Wool is from the Columbia breed. It's yellower in color than the merino, and the company spokesperson encouraged me to swatch some up and try machine washing it on cold. (They don't do superwash or carbonization processing because they believe it diminishes the integrity of the wool. Small bits of vegetable matter are present in the yarn, giving it a rustic air. They also allegedly don't use a chemical mothproofing process, but these skeins have a pretty strong moth ball odor, to the point that they're going back in the garage as soon as I finish this post. Phew!)

I'm psyched to dye some of this yarn and see how it behaves. I definitely like to buy US-made when I can.

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