Crafted By Colette

I haven’t bought any new yarn in ages.  I’ve been working through my stash to use up all the little bits.  But this means that when I want to do something rainbow, I don’t have all the colours.  So last month I gave in and got some new yarn.

I don’t tend to go for expensive stuff.  I like good old acrylic.  It’s suitable for nearly everything I make, it’s cheap, and it comes in a million different shades.  Which is why it took me about three hours on the Deramores website to narrow down the shades I wanted.

I settled on two rainbows in the end.  A bright one, and a pastel one.  And I got all these balls of yarn for £33, including free postage.  Can’t complain at that.

Once I opened the bag I wished I’d made a screenshot or a list of my shopping cart.  I couldn’t remember what yarns were meant to be with what rainbow.  Some of the colours didn’t look quite the same as they did on the computer.

But with a bit of sorting and playing I worked it out.  Here’s my bright rainbow:

Here’s my pastel rainbow:

And here’s the set of neutrals I got to complement them.

Except there were a few issues.

The orange in the bright rainbow is BRIGHT!  Like neon.  Which isn’t bad, and it doesn’t look too bad in the picture, but I’m not overly happy with it for my bright rainbow.  And the pink and orange in the pastel rainbow are too similar.  There’s not enough of a distinction.

Also, there were two balls of yarn that I couldn’t fit in either rainbow.  First this pink – too bright for the pastel rainbow and too pastel for the bright rainbow.

And this blue, which is a completely different fabric type, because I’m an idiot and didn’t read the descriptions properly.

I popped on to eBay to find some alternatives – paying a wee bit more per ball, but not being enticed into ordering another £30 of yarn.

Two of them arrived in the most genius packaging ever!

The pink and very pale orange fixed my pastel rainbow perfectly.

Of the two other oranges, the lighter one was a little too close to the yellow in my bright rainbow, but the other fitted in just right.

Stay tuned to see what I make with them.

For the curious, here are the yarns:

Pastel Rainbow:

pink – Stylecraft Special DK in Clematis
orange – Stylecraft Special DK in Apricot
yellow – Hayfield Bonus DK Extra Value in 0993
green – Hayfield Bonus DK Extra Value in 0956
blue – Cygnet DK in Cloud
purple – Stylecraft Special DK in Wisteria

Bright Rainbow:

red – Deramore Studio Anti-Pill DK in Ruby
orange – Stylecraft Special DK in Spice
yellow – Cygnet DK in Sunshine
green – Stylecraft Special DK in Kelly Green
teal – Cygnet DK in Aqua
light blue – Stylecraft Special DK in Turquoise
blue – Deramore Studio Anti-Pill DK in Lapis
purple – Cygnet DK in Mauve
violet* – King Cole Pricewise in Cerise
fuchsia* – Cygnet DK in Cerise

* I know these names are wrong, it’s just how I differentiate them in my head.