I've not been quiet over the years about the difficulty in getting good yarn in the UAE - we have a small amount of hand dyed which we can get from the lovely Dubai Knits, or Craftland in Dubai but in terms of more affordable yarn for charity items or purely because our purses are pretty tiny this month.....there has not been much to choose from.
However I am pleased to report that this is slowly changing, with a few of the local craft shops cottoning on (see what I did there!) to the fact that more and more people are either re-discovering the textile arts or learning in droves.
There has been a bit of a concerted effort in my Crochet group to source good, affordable supplies and these are coming from places such as South Africa and Turkey. Due to its nature I think crochet lends itself to cotton yarns and this is evident in cute crochet toys, facecloths, table runners etc, which look fantastic in bright cotton colours and also have some good durability. For baby blankets etc something washable and soft is the requirement!
So fast forward to a couple of weeks ago where I volunteered to try out one new yarn to see how it fared. This is from a Turkish company called Mirafil (you can check out the website, although it's not wonderful...) I don't think they are trading in the UK but I believe they do in the US.
The yarn I used is Bosphorus which is 67% Tencel and 33%PA (not that I know what PA is - any ideas?) the 100g ball contained 250m. The cost here in the UAE was AED 56 for 5 balls - which is approx AED11 per ball (£2.46 in UK money and $2.99 for comparison purposes ...... sorry UK the £ is pretty poor to the $ today!!) - so thats good value for money - especially should you want to make a blanket!
The Tencel makes the yarn gorgeous to work with (and its an environmentally friendly fabric too!). On a 5.5mm (I) crochet hook it worked up really quickly.
Originally I was going to make an evening bag, but the softness of the yarn meant that I don't think it would have kept its shape.... and....... the cat took it out of my WIP basket and took it to her bed because it was so soft, and in doing so unravelled most of it.....so maybe she had other ideas!!
Because of the gorgeous dark grey, with flecks of silver, colour (I would say it looks like Welsh roof slates in the rain!) and because I wear a lot of dark colours, I thought I would make a flower scarf with it. The pattern I used is a mish mash of something I saw on Pinterest and then I made some spirals to go on the ends. Whether by luck or judgement I managed to use up pretty much all of the ball and this little nugget was all I had left!
According to the ball band this is machine washable at 30 degrees - so that makes it another winner for a baby blanket, not that I would make one in the Wet Slate colour (no idea of the colour its just called 08!) for a baby - the parents might think me a little odd!!!
Overall I loved it - not in any way the normal yarn I would go for, so perhaps my Yarn Snobbery has made me overlook some of the more affordable options in the past - I'd definitely use this in the future!
