All good things must come to an end, and so it is with my time experimenting with Lion Brand yarns. Well, it’s sort of the end. I’ll be back later in the year to take a more in-depth look at Mandala Baby and Hue + Me yarns, while other bloggers here on KNITmuch will be telling you more about , Wool Ease Thick & Quick and Feels Like Butta – the other yarns I’ve given you a snapshot of over this series.
I’m wrapping up with Wool Ease Thick & Quick. As I was going back over my notes and saw that I wrote, “I really like this yarn. The 80/20 acrylic/ wool content means that it can be washed and dried by machine. The 2-ply twist gives the yarn a rustic feel and it was fun to choose a solid to go with the marled version.” I even found a rustic setting to photograph the yarn – an old, slightly weather-worn arbor.
The marled version of Wool Ease Thick & Quick is fun to use and it’s fun choosing a solid to complement it.
Solids come in a 6 oz [170g] put-up, while the marled colors have 5 oz [140g] per ball. So, when planning a project that puts the two together, it may be necessary to buy an extra ball of the marled yarn.
The recommended gauge for Wool Ease Thick & Quick is 9 sts to 4″ [10cm] on 9mm needles so it is, indeed, a “quick” yarn.
The pattern I chose for this is the Mitered Hat. It looks LOVEly on this young model.
I set the pattern up so that the solid was the cast on color and the marled yarn formed the miter (shown in dusty rose in photo.) I was REALLY happy with the effect the marled yarn had on the finished piece, even though none of the colors I chose are ones I normally wear. (You know, every now and again it’s good to play outside of your own crayon box!)
Again, I didn’t have the size of needles the pattern called for (I’m not surprised, as I don’t often work with super bulky yarns), so I used the next size down and still got a result that fit.
When I finished the hat, I looked at it and thought it looked like something my grandma would have knitted in the 1970s. (That could have been the colors I chose, though. These colors did cause a bit of a flashback!) Anyway, I tried it on, and – what do you know? – right there in the mirror was my grandma! Uh oh! Can’t blame that on the yarn! Regardless, I still like the way the marled yarn worked in this pattern, and I’d like to re-jig this design for other yarns!
A quick selfie reveals a lot about the hat and its maker!
Here’s a photo of my hat in a more neutral setting – just so you can picture it on a more youthful model!
The finished hat has a jaunty turned-up brim and an equally jaunty multi-directional mitered square.
Even though I’m not a huge fan of bulky yarns, I really enjoyed working with Wool Ease Thick & Quick (and Hue + Me) and hope you will, too!
As I mentioned above, I’ll be back in August to talk more about working with Mandala Baby and again in November to take a more in-depth look at Hue + Me. See you then!
This is part 5 of 5 in this series
Go back to part 4: Hue + Me will always knit up great friendship hats