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Join me for a review of these bargain cotton yarns and share a new project to use them with.
View the new Chevron Coaster tutorial here: https://youtu.be/vLAymv1rfok
See all 64 colours of LoveCrafts - Paintbox Simply Dk here:
https://www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/p/paintbox-yarns-simply-dk?utm_medium=affiliate&a_aid=52c9c60d (affiliate link)
See the 49 different colours of Sidar Happy Cotton here:
https://www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/p/sirdar-happy-cotton?utm_medium=affiliate&a_aid=52c9c60d (affiliate link)
The giant Easter egg pattern will be launching on Friday 4th February 2022.
This live was an absolutely massive learning curve, but a pleasure to research for and to have you join me for the experience.
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0:00
Good afternoon, good evening. Oh, I've just managed to press the right button. This is
0:08
a big learning curve for me. I don't know if you could hear any of what I said before
0:13
I've just come onto your screen. Good evening. Hello. We'll start all of this again. Thank
0:20
you so much for joining me and thank you for your patience. Apologies for all my technical
0:24
issues. My old PC has just basically given up the ghost and decided to not work and not find the
0:32
camera and it's taken me long enough to move my other computer across so that you couldn't see
0:36
all of the mess around me in my craft space. So I am sitting in my little corner space in my craft
0:43
room but I would really love to know exactly where you are in the world watching with me
0:48
um give you a little bit oh bernardine welcome and my goodness i am not the biggest fan of
0:56
technology and certainly not when i'm on the hop um believe it or not this was all set up and ready
1:02
to go to go live dead at seven and everything just went a bit awry should we say so a huge welcome
1:10
apologies again for the technical issues but we are here we are live and i'm going to give this
1:16
my best shot. Now before I allowed myself into the studio, I was telling a little bit about myself
1:23
where I am Fiona. I am a UK based crochet designer. We've got a couple of people watching, which is
1:30
so lovely to have them. We've got Erin from Juniper and Oakes, who I've previously interviewed on this
1:35
channel. And I've also interviewed Diana, Diana, Bernadine, sorry, and Joanna. But yes, it's lovely
1:41
to see you here watching as well ladies so thank you so much for joining me try and put my hands
1:46
down as a crocheter they're always busy so i have to try not to talk with them but we are here so
1:53
i'm going to take a deep breath and just relax so thank you for letting me know where you are
1:59
that's the main thing i'll be really nosy and trying to find out as much as i can about you
2:03
um and obviously i want to tell you a little bit more about what we can expect this evening as we
2:08
go through what's turning into hopefully my worst ever life but also my first so it's all kind of
2:15
relative isn't it um so I've done a lot of research about the yarn that we're going to be talking
2:22
about so I'm going to run through some of the history of the companies that we're talking about
2:26
this evening and their yarn I'm also going to tell you a little bit more about a couple of
2:31
patterns that are going on and one's available today as a free download um that you can grab
2:37
today only but it is available forever free both on my YouTube channel to follow along with the
2:42
tutorial and of course you can view the free pattern on my blog as well. So the two yarns
2:48
that we are going to be talking about today are Sirdar, oh wow that does not show up there
2:55
Sirdar Happy Cotton and Paintbox Yarn Simply Chunky. Now I clearly have my light even a bit
3:01
too bright and you can't see the colours of these but I want to share with you a couple of the new
3:05
colours that have come out on the Lovecrafts paint box simply chunky no simply DK cotton and
3:13
also tell you a bit more about these two companies as well because they're quite fascinating histories
3:17
actually um you might not be interested in the history of yarn companies but I certainly am I'm
3:22
going to share what I found with you today so let's start by first of all talking a little bit
3:28
more about Sirdar so the Sirdar Happy Cotton is actually quite a favoured yarn amongst those
3:34
amigurumi makers and that kind of thing it's quite a thick dk weight yarn in comparison to
3:41
the lovecraft simply cotton now i'd love to know if you've ever tried using any of the sirdar
3:47
yarns be it the happy cotton i mean you can see behind me wow that literally looks like a whole
3:53
advert for sirdar i promise you it's not um i just really like the jewel spun that they have as well
3:59
That is an acrylic, 100% acrylic yarn that comes in about six or seven, maybe eight different shades now
4:06
That is a beautiful variegated yarn. The Happy Cotton comes from Sirdar
4:11
And Sirdar is a company originally formed in West Yorkshire in 1880
4:18
So they are a very old company. They were originally started in the UK
4:22
They are available and do ship worldwide. And they're available with quite a lot of different craft specialist companies
4:29
They also do a lot of work with local yarn shops and they do support those kind of, I don't know the acronym, local yarn shops
4:39
They do a lot of work with their local yarn shops in the way that they would offer support to help them build their businesses and that kind of thing
4:46
I know I have a friend who has a yarn shop and she gets on really well with Sir Darf and distribution and getting hold of their new patterns and their new yarns as well
4:57
so the happy cotton itself oh no I have to tell you one of the funniest things I saw when I was
5:03
researching um Sirdar was you may not know this and you may not even know who I'm going to be
5:08
talking about but if you're a Bond fan you'll be very happy to know that Roger Moore modeled for
5:15
them Sirdar have a long history and they're well known for actually creating their very own unique
5:21
knitting patterns and obviously in the 60s and 70s they would get models from various agencies
5:28
to model the wonderful creations that their designers come up with and some of them are the
5:35
when we look at those pictures now of these models and these wonderful designs they are most certainly a little bit laughable But of the time they were de rigueur weren they Let be honest they were of the time And some of the garish colours combinations that they used
5:50
really set those pictures on fire, shall we say. So yeah, Roger Moore, Mr. Bond himself
5:57
did model for Sirdar. And I thought that was quite an interesting fact. so yes good couple of hundreds of years worth of history behind this company and they were
6:09
a west yorkshire company there are a lot of yorkshire yarn companies as well including
6:15
i'm going to say the name wrong west yorkshire spinners are still creating um definitely sock
6:22
yarn that is used which is i know joanna's like no yeah um it was roger moore um so west yorkshire
6:31
spinner still creates the most beautiful sock yarns that um you can they can tell you exactly
6:36
what breed of sheep that their yarn comes from um soar definitely imports a lot of their yarn now
6:42
from turkey which is completely understandable turkey is the biggest yarn producer when it comes
6:48
to cottons and acrylics most definitely so a lot of that is imported I've got to have a look on this
6:53
label and Lovecraft is slightly different it's in Bulgaria so Lovecraft believe it or not is also
6:59
a UK company it was born from three friends that went to a college of some kind together
7:06
inconsistent research there that all went to college together and they started this company
7:11
now you may if you've been in the crafting world for a little while may remember Love Knitting and
7:17
Love Crochet. So Lovecraft ultimately was the kind of parent company of those two companies
7:23
and they amalgamated them a few years back, 2017, I believe it was, maybe 2018, into one big company
7:29
and combined all the social medias, all their websites and everything into this one website
7:35
which is Lovecraft. If you have ever bought from Lovecraft, you will know that their customer
7:41
service oh my goodness I'm intrigued someone's just said they've never used Lovecraft either now
7:47
for me personally I am UK based so obviously they have distribution in the UK there is a big
7:56
distribution center in Germany and they now have a distribution center in America as well so you can
8:02
order directly from Lovecraft in the US and it'll be shipped within the US I believe so it works out
8:07
a bit quicker for shipping but if not they offer very famous delivery prices for the US so in so
8:15
the Lovecrafts itself is original started in 2010 with those two companies so Love Knitting
8:21
and Love Crochet and then they amalgamated in 2017 to create Lovecrafts
8:28
they are very very different companies obviously Serdar is in local yarn shops and Lovecrafts
8:37
Lovecrafts have their own brand, which is this Paintbox Yarns, light, light, bright, sorry
8:42
Their Paintbox Yarn, which is their own brand. You can only get that on their own website
8:48
So they are a web-based yarn provider, let's say. So we've got Bernadine with a claim to fame saying her first order was when it was Love Crochet
8:58
That is a claim to fame, most definitely. um now paintbox cotton itself um the dk simply dk comes in a huge array of colors i was really
9:09
impressed with this because sometimes you can get all of them sometimes you can't and they currently
9:14
have i wrote it down 64 different shades of cotton now i do have two here that are new colors that
9:24
i've treated myself to and you can't really see them i wonder if i can put a shadow oh there you
9:29
go put shadow over them you can see they are the most beautiful kind of lilac-y color and a rose
9:36
pink I think it's called rosy pink obviously had to buy that one and dusty rose I'm not obsessed
9:45
with roses in the slices but they are beautiful colors I'll try and put some photos up on my
9:50
social media for you and after this so you can see them in their natural light as well whereas
9:55
the happy cotton has a lot more of a limited range but still not limited at the same time there are
10:00
only 49 colors goodness so still lots and lots of choice and I think as amigurumi become more and
10:08
more popular the color ranges for cotton um because that tends to be about the preference
10:13
of people making amigurumi those little toys and those dolls the range of colors available in
10:19
cottons is getting more and more vast now I can't speak for some of the American cottons that are
10:23
available I've not used a lot of them and they're really quite hard to get hold of in the UK without
10:27
spending an absolute fortune on shipping Hobbycraft does stock some other cottons as well
10:34
including just for reference oh my goodness you really can't see anything I'm so sorry it's so
10:40
bright the Rikirumi I'm just going to tell you what it says which is designed specifically for
10:44
Amigurumi and they have their whole their own designs to use with their yarn and actually
10:50
their cotton is probably one of the thinnest DK weight cottons I've found however there is one
10:56
massive difference that you don't need to see the colour for to see the difference in this is a 20 gram ball and this is a 50 gram ball so you're almost getting three times as much I
11:08
know it's time you know basically you're getting double the amount in these between these two balls
11:13
but that is reflected in the price so you can find happy cotton for as little as one pound a ball
11:18
all the way up to two pounds a ball I seen it online Whereas Sardar has lots of amazing offers and if you making a big project in their cotton they have um oh they have packs they sell their yarning packs
11:30
oh my goodness don't look over there um so you can buy multiples of the same color or you can buy
11:36
um packs of five and ten and they even have their own colorways that have kind of been paired up
11:42
very nicely to create other patterns as well so we've so far we've got also um Trista who's joined
11:51
us she's from Crochet by Tristas she's a fabulous website you go and check that out she tested one
11:57
of my crochet patterns which was the bittersweet Margaret Margaret bralette and she used this um
12:03
paint box cotton and I'll come back to that Erin and this definitely has a bit of a stretch to
12:12
it when it's worked up. So much like, unlike acrylic, cotton yarn, if you've never used
12:18
this is cotton yarn here, and you, this is my, my poster pattern that's been released today. And you
12:22
can see that there is a lot of give in that. Considering that acrylic, when you're working
12:27
it up, feels like it moves an awful lot more compared to when you're working with cotton
12:32
This creates a stretch when it's worn and definitely when it's being used as well
12:38
so speaking of this pattern this is my brand new chevron crochet coaster pattern that you can grab
12:45
as a free download today over on my blog as part of the news resolution blog pop as well
12:50
so kind of in conclusion overall i am a huge paint box fan but i would use
12:59
sir doll happy cotton in a push no problem at all um if i so for instance when we were talking
13:06
about the hook sizes, they both recommend a four millimeter hook. But I, I found it easier to use
13:13
a smaller hook with the Sirdar, sorry, with the Lovecrafts paint box simply cotton, because it was
13:19
less splitty, which seems strange, because this looks like it really quite tightly woven in the
13:24
happy cotton. But I found that I could put my hook through a bit easier on the smaller hooks as well
13:30
So as Erin has pointed out already that there are some yarns here that are waiting to be used
13:36
well as lots of yarns. They're all destined for projects. I only buy yarn with a project in mind
13:42
However, I run out of time to make all the projects. I don't know about you. So this yarn
13:47
here is designed for a crochet along that will be happening in April. As you can see, I'm really
13:53
far ahead with that project, but ready soon, I promise. However, if I lean and grab this bad boy
14:01
this is a brand new pattern that is launching on Friday so this is a giant Easter egg and this
14:09
has been worked up using Burnout Blanket Yarn Sparkle now I didn't know this existed until it
14:14
turned up in my local Hormencraft store and I couldn't resist it I saw the colors and just
14:18
thought Easter egg so you're going to be able to crochet your very own giant Easter egg on Friday
14:25
you'll be happy to know or maybe you won't but I think it's stunning and it's super super squishing
14:29
my first time working with the blanket yarn and if you've never used it it's it's an interesting
14:36
project well an interesting yarn to work with I found it very different when you compare it to the
14:42
normal working of normal sized yarn shall we say let me know in the comments if you've ever used
14:48
burnout blanket yarn or in my case this is baby blanket sparkle um I would really love to know
14:54
if you've ever used it is so squishy and I've used like velvet yarns and that kind of thing but this
15:00
blanket yarn is not another level it really is but it has worked up really well for the egg
15:07
and I'm really excited to share that pattern with you so after all my faffing around trying to get
15:13
into the YouTube here with you today I quite enjoyed myself I have so much more I could tell
15:21
about what's coming up, should we have a think about what else we have happening in February, I did have a list actually, so on Friday we have, oh interesting, Elizabeth I would love to know
15:33
what you work in it, what you work up in that yarn, because other than blankets, I see a lot
15:40
of people making like supersized amigurumi in it, I see people working, what blankets obviously
15:47
cushion covers I can't I don't think we're limited on the projects that we can use it on I think it's
15:53
just that yes I will concur with Joanna there that sometimes it's a bit squeaky and actually
16:01
I ran it down the side of my desk when I was filming and I couldn't work out what that sound
16:05
was and actually it was the yarn and it's I think it's it's it's 100 polyester so I think it is
16:14
basically you're crocheting a fabric so it is going to work very very differently and it's so
16:19
big um that it feels like you're using up so much yarn and I found it quite hard to pull from the
16:25
middle and I as you can tell from all of my yarns I always pull from the middle and that didn't want
16:30
to pull very well from the middle at all so I will be very interesting and interested to hear what you
16:35
make with Elizabeth most definitely um so last Friday we had the sunglasses case launch that's
16:43
over there on my other desk useful um but that used a different kind of cotton which I should
16:49
have showed you no it's not there anymore it's ready to work oh it's moved it over there ready
16:54
to work on um so I love I'm already ahead of myself so I'm thinking summer spring summer
17:00
patterns already And for me the number one thing to work with is got to be Stylecraft Naturals Bamboo Cotton It is a cotton blend which I always love
17:12
I prefer a cotton blend for garments and that kind of thing
17:17
And it really makes a huge difference because it keeps it silky soft. If you haven't used the cotton bamboo, well, I think we should do a whole video just on that because I have a new numerous amounts of patterns that I've used that in already
17:30
and it was recommended to me by Bernadine who was here earlier and I was wary to try it because
17:36
it's a DK weight yarn again but it's on that thinner side and being the lazy crocheter that I
17:43
am I do have a bit of a preference for slightly larger yarns because projects work up much quicker
17:49
when you're working with bigger yarn and you know when I'm looking at a DK I'd leave it if I could
17:56
but actually it worked up so quickly and was such a pleasure to use so I will come back to that yarn
18:02
with you and tell you more about that yarn specifically and some other cotton blends that
18:06
are out there um I have been delving into designing with some different fabrics and different textures
18:13
this year and I want to tell you more about them because some of them are on the eco side
18:17
some of them claim to be on the eco side and they're not necessarily no they're not necessarily
18:25
of hitting that mark as they should be when it comes to their eco preferences and they're quite
18:30
hard to use so so far I've already used a hemp yarn um I've used some more eco-friendly cotton
18:37
I have some recycled jumbo cotton in the box behind me loads of things that I want to play
18:43
with this year but there most definitely is a whole world out there of yarn still to explore
18:51
Maria welcome wowzers I would not consider someone that's made two cardigans a beginner
18:57
to crochet because garments are generally considered one of the most challenging things
19:03
to make I know that my my friend who's still watching has just complained that no Starcraft
19:07
Natural is not that thin well welcome Maria it's lovely to have you with us um most definitely
19:13
garments tend to be considered more advanced so I think you're doing fabulously and keep on going
19:20
especially if you're garment making because if you can do that you can pretty much do anything
19:25
there is one thing that my friend Bernadine has always said and I've just put it in one of my blog
19:29
posts actually is that as a beginner everything's hard and that's it there is nothing else to say
19:35
about that matter when we are learning to crochet most definitely the idea of I mean obviously
19:41
it's not long before your house will look like this I can assure you but everything's new and
19:47
everything's difficult so we might just throw ourselves into it and keep going and keep trying
19:51
and I think by jumping in and making a garment you're halfway there you really are so well done
19:56
Maria I'd love to have a look at that do come on over to the Facebook community group I'll link that
20:01
to this a bit later for you you can come and join us there as well Maria if you're not there already
20:05
I feel like I should give you opportunity to ask some questions do you have any questions about
20:11
cotton or about specifically the paint box yarns how to get hold of them or the surdar yarns
20:20
is there anything that you would love to know that I haven't already told you about even though
20:24
I've already shared that most useful information which we're now going to be stuck in all of our brains is that Bond modelled the surdar I will find that picture I will share it everywhere
20:35
believe you me, because it blew my mind when I saw it. And it is a typical 1960s knitting pattern
20:42
photo. I'm going to definitely do some hunting and look for some more interesting
20:47
photos on from the days gone by, shall we say. Well, there are, I am so impressed that you are here and watching. I sound so silly
20:59
but I want to thank you explicitly for joining me this evening. I can't thank you enough for
21:04
being here to support me in my first YouTube live. If there's anything else you would like me to go
21:10
through with you, good proof for you on one of these lives, be it yarn reviews, other product
21:15
reviews, crochet hook reviews, I'm more than happy to do so. My desk, I've cleared my desk for the
21:22
day, so I have nothing in front of me except two balls of yarn, but yes, definitely. Oh Erin, you're
21:28
very welcome and thank you for subscribing. It makes a huge difference because obviously it means
21:33
that you get to know whenever I make another tutorial or next time when I go live again
21:37
you'll be able to be notified straight away. I am back as I said with a brand new crochet tutorial
21:45
slash free pattern on Friday. Another sneak peek, I mean it's not small
21:52
The giant egg is coming, you will see this bad boy everywhere over the next few days
21:58
I'm going to be shoving him everywhere, oh no that's not the right thing to say, be sharing him
22:02
everywhere that's what I meant um but yes so make get your three different colors of Bernat blanket
22:09
yarn and you'll be able to make three of those giant eggs you only need one ball to make the
22:14
whole egg but I will say you're going to need 300 grams of polyfill as you call it in America or
22:20
toy stuffing in the UK so a huge thank you for joining this evening it's been an absolute pleasure
22:26
and I will hopefully, if I can get my camera to work, see you again very soon for another
22:34
live or another yarn review or whatever else we decide to chat about so thank you so much
22:40
for joining me, I've really enjoyed myself considering how well it started, see you again, bye
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