I’m reminded of the last minutes of “The Natural” – where Robert Redford glances at his broken bat, turns to the batboy and says, “Pick me out a winner, Bobby.”
Singlebarbed reader Harry has done just that – stumbling onto a superb mohair/mylar yarn blend:
A lady I work with gave me a couple yards of a yarn by Karabella called “gossamer”. You may have already found this stuff, it ain’t cheap, but it makes a great looking nymph. Check it out at yarnmarket.com ($24.95 for 222 yards. also found some on ebay at $20. Haven’t ordered any yet, but they offer some neat color combos. Sort of like the stuff that Danville thread will make by combining chenille and crystal chenille only with mohair.
I don’t buy the “gave me some” angle, most likely he stapled her knitting hand, and while coworkers applied bandages, rifled her possessions and grabbed it.
The yarn is alternating segments of mylar chenille (4″) and spun mohair(16″), yielding a combination of flash, yarn, and when pulled apart, great dubbing. The Mylar segment is a bit thicker than the rest of the yarn and makes a natural taper when wound on the shank.
Available in 37 colors is a bonus – I grabbed the Dark Olive/Copper and the Claret/Gold colors as a trial. The mylar component is quite soft, not bristly or stiff like cactus chenille so it’s well behaved when wrapped on a hook.
The plain mohair portion is quite thin and could be wound on #16’s and #18’s, or you could trim those portions out and rip them into dubbing with a coffee grinder.
Next week I’ll have a long winded article on just that – so grab a couple skeins, clear the table – and be prepared for some mess making.
Let me make this perfectly clear-no bodily injury was inflicted in the procurement of said sample! Rifling of possessions on occasion-I’ll give you that one.
Seriously-get to know someone in a knitting club and ask them to be on the lookout for new and unusual yarns. That’s how I got onto this stuff. I just got my hands on a sample of a Red Lion yarn that is black,olive,tan, and gold. Changes about every 8 inches and has good potential for dubbing.
Looking forward to the your dubbing results.
This is quite the find Harry, great color selection, easy to use, and enough flash to use on everything from Shad flies to Saltwater.
At first the cost puts you off a bit, but when you consider the number of yards per skein and how long it will take to use a full skein, it’s not all that bad. Unless of course you go nuts and order a bunch of color at the same time.
intriguing.
KBarton:
Here is a hot button.
RDT
* Thanks RDT, I’m all over it. Great find.
One hell of a variety of colors! Price works out to 11¢/yard. Beats the crap out of the price of those little 3 yard cards of crystal chenille at Cabelas!!