Wednesday 19 March 2014

Banana yarn

I've discovered banana yarn... and I like it!

Also known as vegan silk, this is made (obviously) from the banana plant. As it's a plant rather than animal fibre it requires cold-dyeing - something new to me. I finally tried it and found it sooo easy! 
It fits in rather well with my busy schedule too as I can set it up, put the lid on and leave it unattended until I get around to it again. Perfect.

The banana yarn I have is a fine laceweight - fine as in 1000metres per 100grams. Believe me, that's fine.

 It's the right-hand skein here - on the left is the bamboo DK that I'm trying out. I'm liking that one too, but that's another story.
As the banana laceweight is so fine and my time is limited, I've machine knitted a sample swatch on my trusty Bond knitting machine. It's rather pretty I think.

The next stage is to fire up my Knitware software to churn out a pattern for a summer tunic for my eldest daughter with it. Thankfully she thinks it's pretty too!

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