We’re very excited to bring you the first-ever 100% cotton Sweet Paprika yarn!
Like many of you, we really enjoy working with plant fibres as well as wool yarns, especially in the hot summer months. So we spent some time this past winter researching and sampling cotton and hemp yarn bases, and in the end we decided to bring in a small batch of a sportweight organic cotton.
Toccata is a 2-ply yarn that’s soft and relaxed, with a subtle sheen. Since the acid dyes we normally use for animal fibres don’t work on cotton, this was a fun chance to experiment with some new dye techniques. We used fibre-reactive dyes for these colours and we played with lots of variables to get a range of both rich shades and pastels. Ivy (our studio assistant) named each colour after a song or piece of music, so we have everything from Clair de Lune to Purple People Eater! We didn’t write down any recipes though, so we won’t be restocking these colours once they’re sold out.
This yarn is a light sportweight that creates a lovely fabric in both knitting and crochet. It can be worked up at a loose gauge for increased drape, or more tightly for structured projects. We found that it knits up very nicely on needle sizes ranging from 3.25-4mm, with a gauge of between 22-26 stitches over 4″. We tested our swatches and they stood up well to machine washing and drying on cool settings, so this is a great choice for projects that need to be easy to launder.
The cotton fibre for this yarn was grown in Turkey, spun into yarn in Italy, and hand-dyed in our studio in Montreal.