A Nice Substitute

I did a post a few weeks back about mill ends yarns.  It's made by plying together random mill ends of yarns and they make these wacky color combinations.  They are not always easy to come by on line or in your local yarn shop.  We have a new Hobby Lobby store that just opened in my neighborhood!  Weeeee!

I set off to see if I could find anything resembling mill end yarn during their grand opening.  What I found was Yarn Bee Dazzling, by Hobby Lobby, for $5.99.  Two ply yarn with a metallic thread added for subtle sparkle, which you can't see in the photos at all, I'm sorry to say.  

I picked a lovely skein called Pastels fully expecting a rather babyish color way.  I was most pleasantly surprised to find that that was not the case.

 The yarn is super soft, 3.5 oz 256 yards and the label reads (4) medium worsted weight.  It's more like a DK (3) weight to me.

Beautiful shades of soft blue, white, grey and turquoise.  

Here you can see a bit of the iridescent thread.

I knit this one to measure 12" from cast on edge to bind off edge, but could have easily gone to 16" before casting off.

The other skein is called Tropics.

I  did a rolled hem edging on the cast on as well as the bind off.  With the tail I did a simple whip stitch around the rolled edge and gave it a little tug to cinch it up.   The picture doesn't do it justice.  It's actually really pretty.

Here's the purple(ish) metallic thread in the Tropics skein.

I'm sorry my photos are not the best.  It's snowing heavily in Nebraska without the sun.

Shades of emerald green, red, dark purple and turquoise are perfect for Mardi Gras!  Hobby Lobby had a few other colors that I'm going back for now that I have tried it!

 

I used Stacy Trocks free pattern on her Fresh Stitches site.  You can find that here.  Scroll down and you will find the pattern.  You can also purchase some mill end yarn from her while you're there.

If you try out this yarn and Stacy's pattern, I'd love to see them!

Best,

Sheila

Purls of Wisdom:

Think out of the box....I found these Christmas ornament hangers in the 75% off bin.  That's about $.62 for 100.  I'm going to use them as removable stitch markers.