When good intentions become great yarn.
I had a revelation recently: I have become a Professional Yarn Enabler.™
I love yarn and everything that comes with it. I especially love the people behind it and their intentions to use yarn to make the world a better place.
I have no qualms about the enabling that comes next.
Recently, Quartermoon Fiber Company sent me two skeins of their flagship yarn, Tekla. Y'all, this yarn is something special.
When I first started knitting, I was fascinated by different fibers. I went on dates with cotton, linen, bamboo, even chitin, which is made of exoskeletons of sea creatures and other things. Eventually, I married merino and have mostly stayed faithful. I like the predictable way wool behaves. I replaced my fascination with fibers with an obsession with speckles (and I'm not coming back from that particular dalliance anytime soon.)
But once I got my hands on Tekla, I remembered how much fun it was to play with non-wool fibers. I actually did the responsible thing where I swatched just to see what the yarn was like (usually I rush the courtship phase.)
Tekla is a yarn that deserves taking your time with. It is a blend of 65% merino, 25% hemp, and %10 silk. None of these fibers hide--this is a balanced yarn which takes all the benefits of its blend.
The merino gives the yarn body.
The hemp gives it a rustic look.
The silk gives it a little drape.
“Silk is the only naturally occurring monofilament fiber, and in blended yarns, is cut to match the length of the fibers it is being blended with to create cohesive yarns.
—Quartermoon Fiber Co.
It looks rustic, but it certainly doesn't feel rustic. It's much softer than it looks like it should be; I can wear it on my neck happily.
“Hemp adds a slight tweediness to the overall appearance, with occasional rustic tufts forming a slight halo across the finished fabric.”
—Quartermoon Fiber Co.
I like the stitch definition. It's neither crisp nor muddled, it's just right. As soon as you knit it up, it already looks well-worn and loved. I think Tekla would make a fabulous colorwork yoke sweater that, as soon as it came off the needles, would look like you've been wearing it for years. And then, you probably could actually wear it for years, because hemp and silk are such durable fibers.
“While Tekla will have a crisp hand straight off the skein, hemp fiber gets softer over time, creating a fabric that is sure to become a new favorite.”
—Quartermoon Fiber Co.
I had one skein to knit up, so I chose a small cowl pattern by Sloane Rosenthal: Sheridan Square. It wasn't an exact fit to my gauge on the yarn, but I felt this project would be so well-suited that I just decided to alter the stitch count a little to make it work. It was easy to do, as the double moss section can easily be adjusted by adding or deleting an even number of stitches. Naturally, I forgot to actually do this, so my cowl is a smidge big. This is me not caring:
I love that the folks at Quartermoon have put so much thought into this yarn practically and ecologically. Their work is a lesson in how to turn good intentions into yarn.
“Hemp is one of the world’s most sustainable fibers, and takes only eleven weeks to reach maturity. It also uses less land and water resources than linen or cotton.”
—Quartermoon Fiber Co.
So, back to the enabling. Check out Tekla for yourself, and be sure to read Quartermoon's story. And if you're reading this before midnight CST on Wednesday, February 6, 2019, you can enter the giveaway for a skein of Tekla in the "Oak" colorway on my Instagram feed.