Why Materials Matter

 My mentor, Liz, at The Hawkesbury Remakery has encouraged me to find materials that speak to me when I'm making my pieces for exhibition.

Thinking about it lead to a bit of a materials study.

Below, you can see three different materials (3 sizes of crochet yarn with their 3 different size hooks).

Not only do you get seriously different results on the size front, I chose three different types of yarn to test. 

The one on the left is a 60 weight lace thread (crocheted over a 4 strand cord) with a 0.6mm hook. It's super fine, (though I might add, not the finest you can do - stay tuned for the 100 weight and the 0.35mm hook (I'm waiting for that to arrive from Japan). This is a thread designed for making fine laces and is not for the faint hearted. This was only my second time using it and I still felt like I was all fingers and thumbs, but I managed a nice little sample. I can't wait to do dome more gorgeous fine laces with this.

The one in the middle is a perle from DMC 8 weight and using a 1.25mm hook. This is the most common thread used in modern Irish crochet laces, Bruges lace and fine crochet stitches. It's smooth and feels nice flowing through your fingers and has a slight sheen in the finished item. I've used it in motifs for my final piece.

The sample on the right was made using a remnant I picked up from The Remakery so I'm not exactly sure of it's weight, but I think it's 4 ply and I used a 2.5 mm hook. The minute I saw the gold flecks I knew I had to use this yarn. I'm a sucker for shiny things. unfortunately the colour doesn't really fit in with the palette I chose for my exhibition piece, but I know I'll use this in something else.

Here's another look at that fine 60 weight thread...

Even this close up, you can't really see individual stitches like you can in the perle next to it.

One more thing I discovered about this 60 weight thread, is you have to have SUPER clean hands to work with this bright white. It picked up the oil off my hands in minutes working with it. Maybe it would wash, but I'm not going to chance that next time - wash hands well before working!

I hope that was useful.

Thanks for reading and subscribe to the blog if you want to make sure you get all the posts.

Jennidee