Use the Good Yarn First

"Firecracker" Sock Yarn by Dragonfly Fibers

I am not a yarn snob. I like ALL yarn, wool, acrylic, cotton, cord, whatever. As long as I can crochet and/or knit the stuff, I like it! I have a habit of buying large quantities of acrylic yarn. This is the first yarn I learned to knit in the early 1960s, so it is my comfort zone. Acrylic yarn of today is much more pliable and softer than it was in the early years. Vintage acrylic yarn is more like plastic. It's rough and inflexible. In order to make a finished acrylic garment softer, you have to wash it in the washing machine with fabric softener.  I've done this many times with wonderful results.

HOWEVER, wool yarn is much nicer to the touch and more pleasant to work with than acrylic, especially when it has some cashmere and nylon in the mix. I'm also a collector of many beautiful merino fibers. Wool is usually way more expensive than acrylic, so the quantities of ONE colorway in my wool stash is limited. For this reason, I usually end up making a scarf, shawl or cowl with my "fancy" yarn, because I just do not want to spend the money for a sweater's worth of wool.

I bought this lone skein of Dragonfly Fibers yarn call "Djinni" in the "Firecracker" colorway from the YarnOver Truck last year at Vogue Knitting Live held in Pasadena. I call this souvenir yarn. I've been looking at it for months, trying to decide what to make with it. I finally rolled it into a yarn cake and started to crochet a simple grid pattern. I LOVE how this is turning out! I'll just keep crocheting until I run out of yarn. After blocking, if I feel this piece needs some width, I'll add a border in a corresponding yarn.

Same yarn, different backgrounds gives this yarn a special look with every photo!