Review: Sirdar Jewelspun Yarn

I have used this yarn in place of Moda Bouvardia to craft a hooded jacket.

The yarn is described as trying to represent a hand spun effect. As someone who has spun their own yarn in the past, I can confirm that this yarn does have this effect. However, it may not suit everyone's requirements as a consequence.

As you can see in the image above, some sections are over spun, while others are under spun. This is easy enough to remedy by making an invisible join, but becomes irritating when there are many sections like this. Also it is not a consistent (persistent) fault. 

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Another annoyance is the appearance of knots, sometimes only a short way into a new ball, and again seemingly random in regularity and frequency. Again resolved by an invisible join, but I don't feel that I should have to keep doing this, particularly when it does create a slightly thicker area in the item being crocheted. 

 

I would point out that there are a lot of images of Sirdar Jewelspun online and based on these I would never have used the yarn. I was lucky enough to be able to see some in real life (although the store did not have enough for my project) and went on to order some online as a consequence. It is definitely a more attractive yarn when you can see it for yourself. 

This is the exact yarn that I bought :- 

 

I have been wearing my completed coat for some time now and it is so lovely to wrap around myself. I really like it and am glad that I picked Jewelspun to make it with. 

Winding a yarn ball

This is me winding a whole ball of yarn on my winder...

Crochet Hooded Coat

For this coat, I started on the small size of the pattern, then tried medium and eventually settled on the large size. The sizing differences were probably due to using a smaller hook size and a very different yarn. 

Moda Vera Bouvardia is a discontinued yarn, however I wanted a look as similar to the image on the pattern as possible and finding a perfect match proved impossible. 

Sirdar Jewelspun is designed to be like handspun yarn, which means that it does have inconsistencies in thickness of thread which in some instances is very pronounced, this had an impact on the way the garment worked up. 

LAMXD yarn ball winder

I bought this yarn winder because I have a job lot of cheap yarn which continually knots up into yarn squids which makes crocheting (and more importantly, keeping an even tension) really difficult.

So far, I have wound a yarn-end with success, and subsequently a full ball too. Both (problematic yarn balls) required me to sort out the yarn squids as I was winding, but it had minimal impact on the yarn cake that the winder produced.

Having crocheted with the small yarn-end cake, I have found that it makes working the yarn much smoother and a great deal easier.

Carpet bag

This bag started out as an accessory to an outfit for World Book Day.

I needed to dress up as a character from a book and was going to be Professor Trelawny from the Harry Potter books.

At first I wanted something quick and easy to produce, but as I got into my research and designing, it became something more. I decided to make the bag that I always wanted, that would fit in everything and be styled like a carpet bag.

I made it from the fabric of a sofa cushion, so that it would be durable and hard-wearing. That meant that I had to purchase a special sewing awl that enabled me to work the thread from both sides of the fabric:

 

Over its construction it evolved to have extras such as a pocket on the front and a shoulder strap to compliment the carrying handles.

It is something that I really enjoyed making in 2018 and today it is still my favourite bag for everything.

Crochet project

Soon I will start posting updates on my crochet crafting.

I finished my Hooded Jacket crocheted using Sirdar Jewelspun on 9 August 2020 and will share the details with you soon, I hope 😀