While I was in Chicago for Vogue Knitting Live (VKL), I met some amazing people. One of them was Claudia from Zealana. If you haven’t heard of this company, you need to follow this link and check them out! ZEALANA. Chances are one or more of their yarns will inspire you and is available at your Local Yarn Store (LYS). I went into a brief description of the company, it’s yarns, and the role opossums play in their development in a previous post. In this one, I’d like to review one of their yarns – Willow. Surprisingly, unlike most of Zealana’s yarns, Willow doesn’t have any Possum in it. That doesn’t take away from the softness though, as it has cashmere instead! 🙂
Willow is a chunky weight, Merino/Cashmere (70%/30%) blend yarn that is a delight to work with. When I first picked it up I ignored the label recommendation of 6.5mm needles, as it felt thinner than it is. I started instead with 4.5mm but soon discovered that I was knitting it too tight! Can you imagine that? Me?
I have since re-knit it using 6mm needles (I’m a loose knitter and usually need to go down at least one size) and am pleased to say that this feels much better. Being me, I started right away into a reversible XO cable pattern I’m trying out and was delighted with the results. This yarn holds cables beautifully, and is nice and smooth, so creating them looks and feels great. The stitch definition is fantastic, and the knitted fabric is soft, yet firm at the same time. I initially thought that 30% was rather high for the cashmere content, but it works very well with the merino.
Here is a picture of the XO cable. Unfortunately I can’t show you the other side as this is still in development and I don’t want to send out any spoilers as yet. I will say that I am very pleased with the way it looks though. I will work on a typical gauge swatch shortly to see how it looks in stocking stitch and what needles I need to get the recommended gauge. My impression thus far though is that this would be a fantastic yarn for a scarf or a chunky cabled sweater. Using 6-6.5mm needles means it will knit up ultra fast as well so you won’t have to wait long for project completion. Willow comes in 19 shades and can stand up to a gentle machine wash. I’d hand wash it myself though.
My one critique of this yarn is in it’s ball size. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common occurrence with a lot of yarns these days. It seems that when you get into the heavier gauge yarns, the ball size goes down. Why is that? I would expect the opposite. I can go into any LYS and pick up a 100g ball of lace weight yarn that has 500m+ to it, but I can’t find a 100g ball of chunky or bulky yarn. Ironically, I need half that in the lace weight and more than that in the chunky. Being a chunky yarn, the 50g ball of Willow only has 67m to it. That’s typical yardage for yarn in this weight, but I would love to see the ball size doubled. This means fewer ends to felt together and/or darn in later. Yes, I know the price per ball would double but it wouldn’t matter as I would be buying half as many – so the end result is the same. Is there some sort of psychological factor regarding the price that has yarn companies (not just Zealana) keeping their balls so small? If there is I say change it. We can handle bigger balls and whatever price comes along with it.
Other than that I love this yarn. As a matter of fact I see a project for myself forthcoming in the near future. Look for the pattern!
Hugzzz 😎