This year my dear friend Cindy has rebooted her indie yarn company nanacindynz and kindly gifted me a skein of 100% Superwash New Zealand Merino worsted to knit with and review.
Cindy themes her products as New Zealand/Aotearoa focused with detailed descriptions of the inspiration of each of her products.
The Kotare yarn I knit with is described as: "Kotare (pronounced Cohr-Tah-Reah - the R is rolled)
The Kotare (New Zealand Kingfisher) used to hang out in the gully next to my house on a branch overhanging the stream, where it would fish for its lunch.
The New Zealand sub-species... is distinguished from the Australian sub-species by its larger size and broader bill and generally by the distinctiveness of its green and blue colours."
Cindy is very generous with her put-up, even though its sold as 100grams = 150m my skein was 140g and therefore 192m!
I used the yarn to knit a Newborn Vertebrae which I modified by knitting the worsted on 4mm to get a six month size and using an icord edging and therefore called it Icorded Vertebrae on Ravelry.
The yarn knit up really well one 4mm needles, soft and squishy but with great stitch definition. I really love the stripy look on little kids and the chunks of colour on the icord caston, edging and bindoff look great too. I will definitely use the icord edging on other kids cardigans, its such a soft and flat finish on stockinette fabric.
Due to the generous put-up I ended up with 38g left! I thought before I weighed it that it would be a struggle to get the full length sleeves with the 100g. But fortunately Cindy is a very generous dyer. So I've got 57m to make a wee hat or something, yah!
I've washed the finished cardi in prep for the baby and there was no dye leakage. Cindy really knows her stuff, I've got socks from last time she was dyeing who's colour is still very true.
There's nothing better than superwash wool for kids and worsted is even more ideal as it knits up so quickly. There are also lots of great American patterns available for this weight.
I would definitely recommend Cindy's work, so please check out her NanancindyNZ etsy shop and her NanacindyNZ facebook page.
She also dyes sock yarn in superwash merino and bamboo and merino roving for the spinners. There are also gorgeous New Zealand themed stitch markers.
