Review of Knit Collage Stargazer Silk and Sequins Yarn

Hey everyone, it's Deja from crocheteverafter.com. Today I'm going to do a review on a knit collage stargazer silk and sequins yarn. I got this in one of my monthly yarn subscription boxes from Yarn Boxes, the actual company, and it is a very beautiful hank of yarn. It's 100% It's 1 cent silk and it has brass sequins that are threaded on the yarn all throughout. Now a couple things that I'll talk about before I unwind it is that the sequins are not there. Sometimes when you see the sequins attached to yarn, they put it in between some of the plies. This is a one-ply yarn, as you can see. It's loosely spun, and the sequin is all the way around the yarn. So that's important for when you're winding it because you want to make sure that you're keeping your sequins spaced out. If you use probably... A crank winder like I have, that might move your sequins so I'm probably going to do this winding by hand to make sure that my sequins stay nice and undamaged and also spread out. So this is 100% silk, it varies, it's got 100 to 110 yards and it looks about a worsted weight. I'm going to come up with a really neat project for this, but, um... First, we're going to unwind it and see how well or how it's tied up so we can see how difficult or easy it is to get our big loop open. Okay, I've unwound my hank, and it looks like there are quite a few places where they have tied it. Let me see, not too many, just one or two places where they've tied my loops together. You can see it's kind of woven in and out. Thankfully, it's in a completely different kind of yarn. That's my favorite when it's not the same yarn as what my hank is made out of, because then I do not feel scared cutting it to be able to wind it. They probably put a couple extra on here just to try to keep these sequins well spaced out, so I'm definitely going to hand wind this so that I don't mess up my sequins and I don't move them around too much. So let me wind this up. We'll do the frog test on it and we'll see how it crochets up because who knows if these sequins will be easy to crochet with or very difficult to crochet around. That's the million dollar question. So let me go wind this up and see what we have. Okay so I'm working on getting my loop untied. I showed you those two little strings that were in my loop and those were easy. I just cut those and pulled them out. They weren't attached to any of my ends so I had to do a little bit more digging and I found this end here. I think this has an end to it but I wanted to show you how different yarn companies can join up their yarn so that you are a little bit more aware of what you're getting. So that you don't make the mistake of cutting something that you may not have to cut or whatever it may be. So there's this kind of weird little twist here and there's three ends coming out of it. So I'm thinking that an end might be attached to a loop or if both my ends are attached, there's another spot on here that looks like there's a tie also. So this might just be one end. So before I cut it, I want to see if they made a special kind of loop that I can pull So I just kind of pull on the ends first to see if it's like a weird kind of loop, you know, like a sailor knot or something. Pull on each end, see if I can figure out how it's tied up. So this one kind of looks like it's got an end over here. So you just want to, I always try to untie everything before I cut anything. Because you could end up cutting part of your yarn and it's never fun to have to tie it back up when you're working. So this is looking a little difficult, it's the fun stuff you get to deal with when you have hanks instead of skeins, and it doesn't really look like I'm going to be able to untie this, so I might have to go ahead and cut it. Now what I'm thinking is that this is the beginning or the ending of my hank, and that This is just a loop that's put in with the regular yarn to loop it up. It could be connected, but I'm not sure. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut here and one of these loops, because I can tell that this is attached to the hank. This is like the beginning of one of my yarns. So I'm going to cut that, because if I don't, I'll just have this knot attached to it anyway. So I'm just going to cut it really close to the knot, and I'm going to leave that out so I can see it easier. And then this is still attached to my loop. You can see it's woven in. So I'm going to cut one end of it real close to the knot again. Let's see if this is just one loop or if it attaches. Aha! See? Just a loop made in the yarn that was holding the loop, the big loop together. So I have one end of my yarn released. I still haven't gotten my other end. So I remember seeing a strange little knot along my loop here. Here it is. So looks like they might have burned the end to keep it from fraying. But you can see, now I have like five different ends going into this one knot. These are not my favorite kind of joins because it really makes it difficult to see what's going on. When I have something like this, I definitely have an end over here. So I definitely have something that I can start with. I'm going to start winding this by hand from this end. I'm not going to cut this end yet because it has five different things going into it. It makes me really nervous. So I'm not going to touch that just yet. I'm going to start hand winding and see what I come to with this and I'll let you guys know once I'm hand winding. Okay, so I got almost my entire ball wound up. Until I hit my knot that I had showed you earlier, so it was pretty uneventful winding. I found out that the sequins were placed about 12 inches apart for every 12 inches on the hank and now I am at my little knot. So what I think this is is that it's the end piece and it was kind of just tied around a couple strands of yarn. So I'm going to try to just untie it and hope for the best and see if that doesn't work. Then I'm going to try to cut just where the knot is because I think this is attached to a couple of winds. I still have about five, about eight maybe, wines left on my hank. That I need to do, so if I cut the wrong thing, I'm going to end up cutting part of my ball of yarn, and that would be really unfortunate for having so little left to do. So let me see if I can untie this, and it looks like I can. Let's see if that loosens up everything. It looks like I got it free, thankfully. So it's not going to cause me too much pain while I'm winding. Yay! Now I can finish winding my ball up. And as I'm winding, because silk really does not have much stretch to it, it's really what you see is what you get, so I'm mostly just kind of just picking up the yarn as I go and setting it on top. So that way I'm not pulling my sequins out of place, I just kind of grab where there's no sequin and just lay it over the top. Because there's no real easy way to wind this without moving your sequins. So that's my tip for that. And also if you get that kind of weird knot, just work through it until you get to it so you can see more of what is causing the problem. So I'm going to finish winding this up and start thinking about what I'm going to make with it. And I'm going to show you the frog test to see how well this silk will pull out. Okay, so I made a little swatch to do the frog test. I used a 5mm H hook, and you can see that my sequins are on both sides. So if you're doing a single crochet or a stitch project where you're trying to get sequins all on one side, it's a little difficult. It takes a little extra time. If you're not thinking about it, they'll end up on both sides, which is probably just as fine as well if you're making, say, a scarf or anything. Um, but we're going to check out how well it pulls out so that if you need to unravel your project, we'll see how easy it is to do, especially with the sequins. So it looks like the silk pulls out pretty easily. I just had a sequin right there, so that pulled out nice and easy. Looks like this is frogging really well. So even though it's a natural fiber, It is nice and silky because it's silk. So it's pulling out very easily, so you shouldn't have a problem if you're undecided on what you want to make with it, and even the slip knot came out pretty well. So, the project I'm going to do is very loopy to kind of show off the yarn and the sequins a little bit better than just a single crochet project, and it's going to be a free project, so keep checking back for that. Okay, I finished the project in my silk yarn, and you'll see it's a necklace scarf, and the silk is great for this type of project because it just drapes so well. It automatically... Falls and drapes down, so anything that you have that's a drapey project would work great for this. You don't want to make a lace shawl that needs to be blocked and nice and stiff out of this, or not stiff but defined stitches because silk will not hold its shape very well. It's got more of a drapey quality, kind of like a bamboo. So the yarn does have that silk smell, so if you're not a fan of the silk smell, you may not want this yarn, but it's very beautiful. It's got a great sheen, so it's perfect for more dressier projects. I really liked working with it. The sequins took a little bit getting used to trying to place them, move them around, but not too difficult. So you'll see that I kind of put them in between these knots. This is going to be a free pattern, it's the Solomon Knot Scarf, so check that out. But you'll see I put the sequins in the middle of the long drapes that I have so that they can kind of hang in between some single crochets and other spots so they hold still. Overall they're really great because they stay where they're at because the yarn is just the right thickness that the sequins don't all just fall to the bottom. So overall I really like this yarn. If you've tried it let me know what you think about it but thank you all for watching.