Today I'd like to share with you a little yarn review! Let me introduce to you Candy Swirl, the latest yarn from Stylecraft. I've just made up a scarf using this yarn and I'd love to share the project with you...
By day, I work in the wool department of a family run art and craft shop. This is both brilliant and dangerous- it is very hard to resist buying everything because there are so many lovely things! I was really looking forward to the arrival of Candy Swirl, which is the much anticipated latest yarn by Stylecraft and I have knitted a scarf in this new yarn to display in the shop, in return for blogging about it here. All opinions here are my own and although Candy Swirl is available to order from my place of work, it is available from many yarn retailers.
With American "cake" style yarns, which are colour changing yarns rolled into a spiral to show off the colours, proving very popular in the knitting and crochet world at the moment, many of the big UK yarn brands are releasing their own take on this trend and Candy Swirl is Stylecraft's.
Candy Swirl yarn is a cake yarn released as part of Stylecraft's Special range, which is their economy acrylic range. I really really love wool and pure fibre yarns, but Special is such a popular yarn range, with the appeal only increasing as bloggers and designers such as Lucy from Attic 24 championing it in their work, producing brilliant colourful blankets and accessories. I've got an ongoing crochet granny square blanket project that I'm making in Special DK.
Pure fibre yarns are, quite rightly so, expensive. The cost of the upkeep of the animals whose fleeces used to make the yarn, plus the production costs and many other factors make it a luxury item. I make small woolen pieces and I can't afford to make many large pieces using pure fibre yarns- I'm not going to change my wool loving ways and convert to using acrylic (very often), but I appreciate the accessible appeal of yarns such as the Stylecraft Special range and I can therefore understand why Stylecraft would want to add a cake yarn to this range.
Candy Swirl is a 150g DK weight yarn in eight colourways, all with sweet/fruit inspired names. I chose to work with the shade called Coconut Ice.
The yarn is beautifully rolled together to show off the lovely colours. However, unlike some cake style yarns where you can start the ball from the outside edge or the middle and knit away, with the Candy Swirl I found it best to start from the outside and re-roll the yarn into a ball first to stop it all collapsing on itself. I got in a bit of a knot to start with because I didn't realise. This would be my only criticism of the yarn because other than this initial issue, it was a pleasure to work with.
Work in progress! Tea and cake to go with my cake yarn. You can see what I did there...
Unlike some of the similar yarns available, Candy Swirl doesn't come with a free pattern on the ball band, but the cheaper price reflects this. However there are many separate patterns for knitted and crocheted accessories available to go with the yarn, lots with several designs on the single pattern and most of them just require one ball. I chose pattern 9413, which has three designs. I chose to make the "Petit Points" scarf, which has a lovely lacy edge.
Certainly where I work, people have expressed an interest in using the yarn to make children's garments, so perhaps this is something Stylecraft will explore in the future
The yarn was lovely to work with- it is beautifully soft- not scratchy at all like some acrylic yarns and It doesn't split as you knit. It was a very enjoyable pattern to knit
On display at work
I hope you enjoyed a little insight into the world of Candy Swirl!
Happy making!
Louise xx
