Today we’re featuring Couture Jazz yarn from Premier Yarns. The first thing you will notice about this yarn is the sheer size of it. While it’s the perfect yarn for arm knitting, which it is marketed for, you may need some special needles if you’ll knit it.
Couture Jazz in the colors Calm Blue and Denim
Right in the description on the Premier Yarns website, it states that Couture Jazz is a favorite of arm knitters. The yarn is lush and thick due to its tube construction. For anyone who is unsure what this means, we’re talking about a yarn that’s not solid all the way through.
It’s a tube, empty in the middle and the edges are made of the fiber. With Couture Jazz, it’s brushed acrylic. You may be thinking that is an odd construction technique, but it’s actually very clever. What makes knitted garments warm is the ability to be solid, with pockets of air space, like a down jacket. You wouldn’t think feathers would be warm, especially all pell-mell inside a jacket. It’s the fact of the feathers being fluffy and able to capture and hold warm air against your body.
You can see how the fiber is hollow in the middle and it is a web-like tube.
Yarns that have a tube construction are always going to be warm because not only do that have air space within the fibers, there are two layers of fibers. The loft (or fluffiness) of the fiber will determine how much air is held in with the fiber on its own. Looking closely at the fibers, you can see how there are thousands of tiny little spaces for air to be trapped. Once the fiber is actually knitted into a garment you’re just adding more air pockets with your needles. It’s really an inception kind of situation.
A ball of Denim colored Couture Jazz next to Navy Blue knit in a garter stitch
Although this is acrylic yarn, and most acrylics are machine wash, Couture Jazz is hand wash and lay flat to dry. This has to do with the tube construction. As this yarn is so fluffy, a machine wash would take the loft right out of this yarn.
Acrylic, being synthetic, is not prone to matting, but to make acrylic fluffy, each individual fiber needs to be quite fine. There’s a lovely little halo around Couture Jazz and it’s comprised of these fine fibers. With any kind of machine washing the fiber is going to get agitated, will break or will ‘mis-align’. It’s much easier to gently hand wash rather than risk breaking any of these fine fibers.
Calm Blue on a knitted swatch of Mist and Lavender Gray
Give Couture Jazz a try and see what you think! The tube construction and sheer size make knitting a little bit different from your average yarn. Tune in tomorrow to hear tips and tricks for knitting with large caliber needles.
This is part 1 of 5 in this series.
Go to part 2: 6 tips for knitting easily with jumbo yarn and large needles
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