Blue Sky Organic Cotton (Dyed)
Blue Sky Organic Cotton (Dyed)
Over the summer I knit a baby sweater out of the Blue Sky Cotton (the dyed version of Blue Sky Organic Cotton). I went to an LYS with my friend, looking for a washable cotton baby yarn. That particular LYS does not have a great selection of cotton yarns, and my friend persuaded me to buy this yarn since it felt soft in the skein and it had some nice "baby" colours.
The yarn is 2-ply, 100% unmercerized cotton worsted-weight yarn.
The Good
It comes in some nice colours that evoke summer. It's organic. It doesn't have that shiny look that the mercerized cotton yarns have. And the mom really liked the sweater I made (although I attribute that to the combination of colour, sweater pattern, and charming buttons).
The Bad
In retrospect, I see now that this type of yarn is simply a bad idea. Cotton fiber has an extremely short staple (as compared to wool) and is simply not suited to a 2-ply structure. Most cotton knitting yarns are multi-ply and that reduces pilling. With a soft 2-ply like this, pilling is inevitable. In the case of the baby sweater, the yarn started pilling very quickly as I knit with it. It looked raggedy as soon as I was done with it. (I have my swatch of it here and I can, without pinching too hard, pull lots of fibers off the surface even though there is no halo. It would be harder to pull the cotton off the edge of a Q-tip.) Unlike other cotton yarns I have used, when I washed the finished item the "look" of my stitches did not improve. It was a disappointment. I can only imagine how much worse it will look after a few wears.
Conclusion:
I rate this yarn a 1. I would never use it again for anything. The only reason I would recommend this yarn to anyone is if one was committed to using a commercially-made organic cotton yarn.
Over the summer I knit a baby sweater out of the Blue Sky Cotton (the dyed version of Blue Sky Organic Cotton). I went to an LYS with my friend, looking for a washable cotton baby yarn. That particular LYS does not have a great selection of cotton yarns, and my friend persuaded me to buy this yarn since it felt soft in the skein and it had some nice "baby" colours.
The yarn is 2-ply, 100% unmercerized cotton worsted-weight yarn.
The Good
It comes in some nice colours that evoke summer. It's organic. It doesn't have that shiny look that the mercerized cotton yarns have. And the mom really liked the sweater I made (although I attribute that to the combination of colour, sweater pattern, and charming buttons).
The Bad
In retrospect, I see now that this type of yarn is simply a bad idea. Cotton fiber has an extremely short staple (as compared to wool) and is simply not suited to a 2-ply structure. Most cotton knitting yarns are multi-ply and that reduces pilling. With a soft 2-ply like this, pilling is inevitable. In the case of the baby sweater, the yarn started pilling very quickly as I knit with it. It looked raggedy as soon as I was done with it. (I have my swatch of it here and I can, without pinching too hard, pull lots of fibers off the surface even though there is no halo. It would be harder to pull the cotton off the edge of a Q-tip.) Unlike other cotton yarns I have used, when I washed the finished item the "look" of my stitches did not improve. It was a disappointment. I can only imagine how much worse it will look after a few wears.
Conclusion:
I rate this yarn a 1. I would never use it again for anything. The only reason I would recommend this yarn to anyone is if one was committed to using a commercially-made organic cotton yarn.