Thursday, May 23, 2013

Review - Hometown USA from Lion Brand Yarn

I've done a half-dozen hats with this yarn and it's time to give a review. Hometown USA is a super bulky yarn found at craft stores.

It's 100% acrylic... which is ideal for me and mine - due to wool allergies and being easy care.

I LOVE the colors. I LOVE the price. And I LOVE the softness of the yarn. I do. It's a reasonably priced yarn and it's a joy to work with albeit with the typical non-stretchy nature of all 100% acrylic yarns.

I'm only slightly disappointed that the skeins are a little small - only 81 yards per skein which isn't quite enough for two of my Brioche hats.

BUT, there's a caveat. I've twice come across a skein where there had been an issue. The first one simply had a single ply out of several that had broken. I just made sure that I lined up that strand and knit it with it's partners and trimmed the ever so slight little ends that poked out. No big deal. Then the second skein that had an issue had fluff plied in with the plies, broken plies, pieces of fluff just 'stuck' to the plied yarn... I thought about cutting out the three to four yards of bad yarn... but with super bulky it's a pain dealing with working in ends... instead I pulled out the loose fluff, did the best I could with broken plies within that section and just kept going. It's in a crocheted hat, with lots of double-crochet, so the issue is really not that noticeable. But if it had been in a knit stockinette section? I wouldn't have had a choice but to cut it out as it would have looked horrible. Both of these issues were not visible from the outside of the skein... and if it had just been a broken ply? I wouldn't have cared. But the second skein was pretty messed up. If I continue to use this yarn and continue to find these issues? I would probably stop buying this yarn.

In the meantime, it's the only super-bulky, 100% acrylic yarn with a smooth ply that is affordable for a lot of my charity knitting, so I'm still planning on continuing to buy it and use it for those purposes.

The sad thing was that I was looking for something just like this to make an afghan... and my son was asking for a super-soft super bulky wear-around-the-house sweater for next winter... due to the issues and the small skeins? I don't want to buy a couple of dozen skeins for a big project and risk it. So, I'm still on the search for a replacement for the Wool-ease that I can no longer use.

FYI - no one is offering me anything for this review. I have not received anything free nor been paid for offering my opinion.

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