In Which the Pirate Considers Cotton.

Rowan Denim is not as hard on the hands as some other cotton yarns I’ve worked with, even if it does temporarily smurf my fingers. I may have to change my mind about not liking cotton! I’ve also tried Mission Falls 1824 Cotton for a Yoda Sweater, for the first baby of close friends, and Wool in the Woods‘ Helix for a Big Bad Baby Blanket (from the first Stitch ‘n Bitch book), for my second niece on Pirate-Husband’s side of the family.

The blanket took three skeins of the Wool in the Woods – you can see where I switched from one to the next, and I must have knitted the last skein from the other end, because the colors pooled totally differently. The argyle look is spiffy! It would have been neat if the whole blanket pooled up like that. If I remember correctly, I enjoyed the Wool in the Woods yarn more than the Mission Falls 1824. On the other hand, the sweater knit up a lot faster than the blanket! Any future baby blankets will be worked in acrylic and larger needles. Pirate-Husband calls me a fiber snob, because I do tend to prefer wool, but I’ve worked with some acrylic yarn that’s soft and suitable for babies, and it’s conveniently washable. (And inexpensive.) I think I’ll save the more expensive natural fibers for myself!

I find it harder to keep an even stitch tension with cotton, as opposed to wool. Sometimes on the knit rows, the top of the stitch below gets pulled up into my working stitch and I have to tug it back down at the end of the row. This happened a lot more with the Mission Falls and the Wool in the Woods yarn than with the Rowan Denim. Maybe it’s because the first two have an extra thread wrapped around them? In any case, the more I knit with the Denim yarn, the more I like it, and that can’t be bad!