It’s a Wrap yarn from Red Heart is a unique yarn because it’s a gradient. The yarn shifts through several different shades, or colors, as you knit with it. It’s a harder color change rather than a true gradient, so the previous color suddenly stops and is taken over by a new color, giving the effect of chunks of color.
It’s a Wrap yarn from Red Heart!
Let’s start at the beginning and talk about the composition of the yarn. It’s half cotton and half acrylic, which is a new and interesting combination. The cotton will lend its antibacterial and heat releasing features, while acrylic will add its flexibility and durability. Cotton is never spun very tightly because it already has so little stretch, this makes for yarn that is splitty. It’s a Wrap is spun with an average tension so there’s a little bit of texture and it makes for a yarn that’s much easier to knit with.
You can really see how the colors chunk in the yarn.
The washing instructions are to machine wash on gentle and lay flat to dry. Everyone knows that I love to machine wash my knitting, I simply don’t have the time to play with finnicky fabrics. Cotton and acrylic are normally okay to be thrown in the washer, so I am glad that has carried over to It’s a Wrap.
I love it when the washing instructions are carefully laid out.
Choosing your pattern will be an important part of this knitting project. The way the colors block is going to be an integral feature of your garment. If you’re thinking about knitting a sweater, the sleeves would have a different pattern than the body. Unless you’re planning on cutting portions of the yarn out to make the sleeve stripes match. I’ll refer back to this article about knitting with color shifting yarn during the week.
If you look underneath 50% cotton and 50% acrylic, you will notice that there’s 1100 yards of this yarn in one ball!
It’s a Wrap is the ideal yarn for a shawl. Yes, I’m still on a shawl knitting binge, thank you for asking. The yarn is a very light weight, which doesn’t lend itself well to a blanket, but it goes along perfectly with a shawl, or a small lap blanket.
I’m really excited about It’s a Wrap lace weight yarn, it’s amazing in so many ways.
Keep reading this week for a couple of ideal patterns and tips on knitting for light weight yarn. It’s a Wrap is a very versatile yarn and a great place to start if you’re looking to switching from a sock weight yarn down to something a little smaller.
This is part 1 of 5 in this series.
Go to part 2: Why you should knit with lace weight yarn
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