A Comfort Knit That’s Just for You

As I write this we’re kind of in the thick of holiday preparations, that mad rush toward the end of the semester, finals and school holidays and actual holidays and the end of the year and wouldn’t it be great to get a moment to do something that’s just for you?

That’s what I was thinking about when I came across the pattern for the Tied Wrap from Lion Brand Yarn.

It’s just a giant triangle of garter stitch, with stockinette stitch ties to make it easier to wear (you could absolutely make these I-cord instead and you’d never have to purl at all).

Even better, it’s worked on super bulky yarn, and it’s just a one row repeat from the second row until the bind off. Easy, meditative, perfect me-time knitting for when you get a second to sit down in this busy season or you want to knit in front of the latest Hallmark movie.

Of course this project would be a great gift, too, and it’s easy enough that a new knitter can make it, and a knitter with a little speed behind them might even still be able to make it as a holiday gift for someone.

I urge you not to do that. Most people we want to knit for aren’t really worth it. They won’t appreciate the things we make nearly as much as we will.

And after having survived almost this whole year, don’t you deserve a little treat?

The pattern in available for free from Lion Brand Yarn, but you can also get a kit from them that includes the yarn (and needles if you need them). But if you’re got a stash of Lion Brand Hometown Yarn, or anything else super bulky, you can of course use that. You could even hold a couple of strands of worsted weight yarn together if that’s what you have on hand. Do what you like!

[Photo: Lion Brand Yarn]

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations.

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind.

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca.

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl.

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions.

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic).

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only.

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

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