My second goodie box from Trimcraft is a box of double knit Spiin yarn. Twenty 100g balls of it! The rainbow colours are impressive and with it being 100% acrylic, project will be washable. The 8ply construction means the yarn is relatively soft and in use resists splitting more than other yarns I have used. There is a downloadable project pattern book, which I will get to after I have finished my first project, a baby blanket.

For that, I have decided to try something new and am now learning Tunisian crotchet. This appears to be a combination of traditional crochet and knitting as it builds in rows and leaves a lot of loops on the hook. Indeed some hooks have long plastic extension cables attached for wider pieces. Here are my test swatches:

The crochet forms more of a fabric than I’ve created before, with the knit stitch in particular forming a dense, thick result. I’ve chosen to do alternating squares of mesh and simple stitches as these are the quickest of the set to make. One downside of Tunisian crochet is the curl the patterns cause in the resulting fabric, hence the pinned swatches. Normally the finished pieces can be flattened by blocking out, spritzing with water and leaving to dry. Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear to work with the acrylic yarn, which according to the label also can’t be ironed, so I will be experimenting with other ways to flatten out my panels.

The Spiin yarn is available exclusively from Amazon – 20 x 100g – RRP 29.99.