Stone Washed: the yarn with a bit of magic

Stone Washed* is probably the most famous yarn produced by Scheepjes. Well, I can be mistaken of course but the first association that comes to my head when I hear brand name Scheepjes is exactly Stone Washed. First time I saw and touched it last summer. Being on a holiday trip to Belgium and walking through Gent I came across a local yarn shop with lots of Scheepjes yarns. Did I like Stone Washed from the first glance? Yes I did! And a few months later I got a lucky chance to try it.

I was shipped several skeins of Stone Washed yarn for my new project (a free pattern will be soon published here) and since I’ve created a column with reviews on my blog, I decided to share my own opinion about this yarn as well.

My first impression about Stone Washed is that it is very warm. Warm and soft. It is cotton blend (70% cotton, 30% acrylic) and thus ideal choice if you suffer from allergy (animal hair) or if you are vegan. This Sport weight yarn comes in balls of 50g/1.76 ounces with 130m/142 yards each. For me these yardages are ideal to calculate more or less exact amount of yarn needed for each project. Needles and crochet hook 3-3.5 mm (D, E) are recommended by the producer, but it is also possible to go for 4 mm (G) hook to obtain more open effect.

Scheepjes made a great job with construction of this yarn. And its look exactly reflects the name of the line: the shades look very rich but at the same “washed out”. This yarn consists of several thin threads of white color twisted together with a little bit of colorful fluffiness. And this fluffiness is the reason why the projects made with Stone Washed yarn are very difficult to rip. So, please, keep it in mind and better make several gauge swatches before you start to create a large project.

As was mentioned above, Stone Washed is a soft yarn. But it is stiff and strong at the same time. I cannot imagine this yarn can be torn! And this is actually a big magic. Because being very strong and stiff in a way, this yarn is crocheted and knitted in a very soft and pleasant to touch fabric.

Each shade is named after the natural stone (Blue Apatite, Canada Jade, Moon Stone, Smokey Quartz, Amazonite…) and there are 23 shades available at the moment. I would personally prefer many more shades to choose from, so hopefully Scheepjes will think about development of this precious yarn line in the future.

The colors are not very contrasting and form mostly a very calm pastel palette with several bright accents. At first I was a bit afraid to choose this yarn for my project in overlay crochet technique, and in fact it took me a while before I came up with a nice color combination. But it worked out. So I am safe to say that Stone Washed can work equally well for monochrome designs and also for the projects with multiple color changes.

As many other Scheepjes yarns, each skein of Stone Washed has a small magic label “Easy Start” marking the yarn tail hidden inside the ball.

And here is a good news for those of you who love to wear handmade garments but are not very fond of hand washing them separately. Stone Washed yarn is machine washable at 40 degrees (though I would probably still wash them by hand and in cool water).

If you like to work with cotton blend you should definitely give this yarn a try. Stone Washed yarn is available in your local Scheepjes stores as well as via larger online retailers, such as Wool Warehouse* and Black Sheep Wools* (both in UK but with international shipping), Caro’s Atelier* (NL and Europe), Knotty House* (Canada) and Loveknitting* (US).

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