A Few Good Yarns

There’s nothing like happy yarn mail to make your day. Indie yarn shop A Good Yarn Sarasota sent me a few yarns to review recently, and I was so excited when they arrived! I received one hank each of Dream in Color Jilly yarn, Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock and Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sport. Being the swatch addict that I am, I knit up a little 4×4 inch stockinette swatch in each yarn and blocked them. The photos are of each swatch post blocking.

A Good Yarn is located in Sarasota, Florida, but thanks to their large online presence, they’re a shop I was a fan of despite being a Chicagoan. One of the unique things A Good Yarn Sarasota offers is exclusive colorways of yarns that knitters know and love. All three of the yarn colors featured in this post are among their exclusive colors. What’s seriously cool is that all of these colors are either inspired by the underwater photos taken by the owner’s husband, places around the Sarasota region, or teams local to the area (or call the area home during spring training).

The yarn above is Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Scarlet and Grey (a.k.a Tampa Bay Buccaneers colors). I am a native of a state (North Dakota) that’s entirely lacking a pro team, I never really got into sports. Sports chick or not, I really dig the red and grey striping in this yarn! Lorna’s Laces is a favorite yarn company of mine (they’re based in my adult hometown, Chicago!), and their sock yarn is yummy to work with. (Sorry for all the parenthesis here! Ha!) It’s so soft, and the really even striping has me hankering to make a fantastic baby sweater, hat, or of course, socks. I really can’t wait to cast on some selfish socks with this ASAP.

Next , I tried the lovely Jilly from Dream in Color in the custom Cabbage Patch colorway. If you visit the custom colorway page for this one, you can see the photo this yarn is inspired by, and it’s so good! You can absolutely see the color connection between the fascinating photo and the finished yarn. You can see in the swatch I knit with this how the color changes throughout in a nice, subtle way. This yarn is single ply, which would be great to show off some nice lacework. With 880 yards per skein, you could knit an impressive Stevie Nicks-style shawl! (#personalknittingbucketlist)

Lastly, I tried Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sport in Grape Jelly. Oof, I love me some grey and purple, you guys! This yarn, much like Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock, is nice and soft. With the more modest yardage compared to the 800+ yards of the Jilly, I’m really leaning toward a baby project with this yarn. Last year I blogged a couple baby blankets (here and here) during a 14-baby baby boom among my friends and relatives, and now that all those babies are turning one, this yarn might need to turn into a baby raglan pullover for one of them.