When my yarn arrived last week, I was decidedly nonplussed. The colors were....meh. The texture was...meh. The Babette square that I made as a swatch was wonky, and I kept on having problems with splitting between the plies. I began to worry. Had I been in such a rush to start this project that I bought yarn that wasn't suited for it? Had I wasted my yarn budget on crap?
To be honest, my fear was that my motivation to save a few dollars had backfired, and that I would end up having to order "better" yarn anyway, while not being able to return the yarn that I had bought on sale. I worried that I had been cheap to a fault. I decided that what I really needed to do was make a decent double-crochet swatch with the yarn, as well as swatches with a few others. I ran to some local shops to buy different brands and types of yarn, both less and more expensive than the Jaeger Matchmaker.
I swatched with Brown Sheep's Lamb's Pride Worsted, Heirloom Easy Care 8-Ply, Louisa Harding Kashmir Aran, and RYC Cashsoft Baby DK. The Lamb's Pride, Easy Care, and Kashmir were chosen because they had a different texture or build than the Matchmaker. The Lamb's Pride (LP) is single-ply (which I love working with for it's simplicity and texture), but it's not superwash (machine washable). For that reason alone I knew that I wouldn't make the blanket out of LP, but I wanted to swatch with it anyway (I'm the boss of me, dammit!). The Easy Care (EC) has a weird (in a good way) "cable spin" that produces its interesting texture, and also makes the plies all nice and stuck-together-like. After my troubles with the Matchmaker, I wanted to try yarns that didn't split as easily. Enter the EC. I bought the Kashmir for its chain construction, which I also figured would be easier to work with than splitty plies. It also has cashmere in it, and is super soft and squishy. The Kashmir also fell into the "more expensive" category that I wanted to delve into a little bit. Also in that category is the Cashsoft, a wonderfully soft yarn with some beautiful colors available.
Here is the lot of the yarn, plus my swatches:
I swatched with one hook size (5mm) for the Lamb's Pride (orange) and Kashmir (green), but used two hook sizes (4 & 5mm) for the Cashsoft (beige), Easy Care (yellow), and Matchmaker (cream). I haven't swatched with the Emu (dark brown) because it just arrived from England today.
So, what did I think of the yarn selection? Wow - it was quite a learning experience. My feeling that the single-ply, chained, and cable-plied yarns would be easy to work with was justified. They sailed through the hook(s) very easily, except the Lamb's Pride, which kind of got hung up on my wedding rings a little. The Kashmir and Cashsoft both had that cashmere softness that is so tempting. The Easy Care was easy indeed, but the swatch was not as soft as I had hoped, and I also didn't like the texture of the swatch as much as I thought that I would.
Finally, the Matchmaker swatch was...wonderful!! It turns out that swatching with a Babette square was just a bad idea, and I should have done a double-chain swatch in the first place. I didn't have trouble with splitting, and the yarn was fine to work with. Now that the balls have been out of the box and sitting on my craft table for a few days, they have fluffed up and the colors have grown on me. I will definitely be replacing a few skeins (bluer blues, better light browns and a green), but I am very pleased with the selection as a whole. The yarn is softer than I had thought at first, and I don't think that it would be worth spending the extra green on an entirely Kashmir or Cashsoft blanket. I still can't decide if I like the look and feel of the 4mm or 5mm part of the swatch better, but there is time to figure that out later.
I am beyond stoked that my initial impressions of the yarn were wrong, and can not wait to begin crocheting the 100+ hexagons for the blanket. I'm still waiting (not so patiently now!) for the book with the pattern, and for a few more balls of yarn, to arrive.
BTW - individual photos of the balls can be found at my Flickr page or my Ravelry Stash page (if you're a beta member). Photos of the swatches (in all of their unblocked glory) can be found on Flickr.











