Shopping Trip - Novelty Yarns

I'm a fan of novelty yarns. Now, you may sneer in disgust and tell me how I should only use natural yarns and how true knitters would never touch novelty yarns, but I don't care. I love novelty yarns.

Not for everything, of course. And not to the exclusion of loving natural fibers. But I do love the fun factor in novelty yarns. And I like my old lady sports knitting to be fun.



So I was happy to see a couple of new things at Michael's this week. Like this Magical yarn by Loops & Threads. This is a really interesting yarn, texture-wise. It's a couple of different colors of smooth acrylic yarn interspersed with lengths of a soft fuzzy fur-like yarn.

The pattern on the wrapper is for a striped sweater. The yarn, of course, would do the striping. That's interesting, because I would not have immediately thought "sweater" when seeing this yarn. Even now, I'm doubting my own ability to wear horizontal stripes on a bulky knit sweater. And I'm thinking that having the stripes made out of fur would only exacerbate the issue.

But, this would be fantastic for a scarf, hat, afghan, or shawl. And the colors are great. I only took this pic, because this was my fave color combo, but there are some really nice colorways in this yarn. Unfortunately, Michael's apparently doesn't have Magical on its website yet, so if you don't want to make a trip to the store, you'll have to give their IT department time to add it.

Midnight is also from Loops & Threads. It's a long color change variegated yarn with a little bit of sparkle. This blue colorway is just one of the six or seven I saw. But, you know, if you're going to name a yarn Midnight, I just think it should be blue. The blues in this yarn range from a pale, faded denim color to a deep... uh... midnight.

I didn't check to see what the fiber content was on this. It felt acrylic, but I think it would be super cool if it was mostly wool so it would felt. Then it would lend itself to bags and bowls and formed hats, and all kinds of stuff. Still, I could see this being a good go-to gift scarf yarn.

It always makes me laugh when you knit a scarf with a billion cables and bobbles and lace patterns and color changes and then your non-knitting friends will be way more impressed with a garter-stitch fun fur scarf that you knit during the course of a Doctor Who episode.




And, speaking of knitting for non-knitting friends... This Poodle yarn looks like a good candidate for this year's scarves, since all my friends have scarves in every flavor of fun fur by now. I personally would love a hat made from this yarn. It just looks super fun, doesn't it? I also think this would make really funky-looking boot toppers. Maybe a hat/boot topper/scarf set?





Curiously, M was relatively unimpressed by all of those, and instead zeroed in on another Loops & Threads offering, Dewdrops in Garnet. It's a super bulky acrylic/mohair blend, shot through with color-matched sequins. It was in a clearance section with several other red yarns (I also bought 2 skeins of Stitch Nation Full o' Sheep in Poppy, which I will find a use for) so I got what was apparently the last two of a matching dye lot.

This yarn will become a scarf, because that is specifically what M asked for ("Make me a scarf out of this."), but I could certainly see it as a shawl, too.