Thursday, April 19, 2007

yarn substitution - Morrigan

Hi all:

As an aside, I'm amazed at the beautiful work I see below. Itching to start something (after I finish the Samus cardigan from Knitty.com)...

I am loath to ask this question as I realise a great deal of work was put into determining the right yarn choice for Morrigan. However, it is rather too expensive for me to buy (at $15.95 cdn per skein) especially as I confess that I don't know whether I can stick out the whole pattern or not! ;)

So - I was wondering if anyone has any ideas about substitutes. I have come across one cotton blend yarn (which I've used previously) with the same weight (50g = 160m, 96% cotton, 4% polyester) - Elastico by Lana Grossa. I don't know if it's suitable or not - I can tell you that the finished fabric in past projects has been rather stretchy (I've seen patterns for bathing suits call for it, for example). The Elastico is about 1/2 the price of the Calmer where I'm at.

Cheers,

Kristina

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know much about yarn substitution for this particular pattern, but I wanted to let you know that two discontinued colors are on sale (almost 50% off retail) with an ebay seller here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Special-Offer-Rowan-Calmer-CHIFFON-Selling-SIngles_W0QQitemZ220102517083QQihZ012QQcategoryZ75569QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/Special-Offer-Rowan-Calmer-LAUREL-Selling-SIngles_W0QQitemZ220100154432QQihZ012QQcategoryZ75569QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem

I like both colors a lot and have them in my stash. Laurel is a unique light green that might not suit most tastes, but Chiffon I think is a really pretty mauve-ish light purple. The sale price is still a little steep, but the yardage is decent and if you're willing/able to indulge a little, I think it's totally worth it! I absolutely love the Calmer and am knitting Tubey out of it, all of it I bought off ebay or obtained from swaps and it looks like I am going to have a lot left over. It resells well on destash, by the way, so if you didn't use all of yours you could probably get some of your money back.

I totally respect you wanting to substitute, I just wanted to let you know... and that Elastico sounds really interesting, I'll have to check it out! Cottons with elastic properties are something I'm always on the lookout for.

Anonymous said...

Those URLs above scroll to the right, by the way... a search for "Rowan Calmer" on ebay will pull those up if you can't find them.

Kristina B said...

Hi Michelle:

Thanks for the info about the discontinued colours. The discontinued Calmer problems would probably be about the same price as the Elastico! I'll have a look - although I am partial to bold colours rather than pastels. ;-)

Do by all means check out the Elastico. I really enjoyed knitting with it. It's nice to have the give when working with cotton ;-)

Anonymous said...

I like bold better than pastel, too... unfortunately Calmer's line is dominated by light colors. It's not as cheap as that ebay seller's discontinued Calmer, but there's the other colors for $9/ball from the same seller (and I've had a good experience buying from her), or yarn.com has it discountable starting at the full price of $11.95 with 20% or 25% off depending on how much you buy. I think the ebay seller is the best deal though, discontinued or not. (The deep magenta-y purple, Plum, has reversed my former hatred of purples totally, a nice bold color.)

Kristina B said...

HI Michelle: thanks again for the suggestion. I did break down and ended up ordering some of the Blush (discounted) off the Cucumber Patch website - and, while I was at it, enough Rowan All-Seasons Cotton for the "His Gansey" (in the No Sheep book) plus another sweater for myself.

The plum colour you talked about was really nice as well - having said that I've always been a fan of purple! :-)