Fiber Friday – Brooklyn Tweed Peerie

Fiber Friday

What is Fiber Friday? Every Friday I’m gonna share with you one new yarn that I’m absolutely loving, including allllll the info – the yarn specs, what I would make with it, what I’d use it for, why it’s great for certain types of projects, and what patterns I’ve found that use this yarn including my own patterns and patterns from others! It’s fun to really focus on one specific yarn and explore all the projects people have been making with it. This is one way that I find new patterns, new designers and new designs that I love and can add to my Ravelry queue to make when I have time to start a new project!

Quick back story on why I’m doing this: When I started knitting and crocheting, I basically used Lion Brand Thick and Quick yarn exclusively. I’m sure you’ve tried it before.. It’s the best. It’s a fun, high quality department store chunky yarn that is easily available and inexpensive – perfect for beginners or those who love those quick gratification projects. If you’re learning to knit or crochet, I would 1000% recommend learning with this yarn! In the last 3 years, I have knit more hats made with Thick and Quick than I can count, and I think now it’s time to venture into new territory and explore some thinner yarns.. and I thought it would be fun to do it together!

 

Brooklyn Tweed – Peerie

Like I said, lately I’ve really wanted to expand my stash to new brands, new fibers and new types of yarn. I’ve been allowing myself to order new yarn every month and it’s been really fun trying out new materials and new yarn weights.

This is my first time knitting a fingering weight sweater. I made a similar sweater about a month ago with Lion Brand Hand Dyed Heaven as a sample/experiment project to design my first top-down circular yoke knit sweater because I wanted to figure out how I liked my increases spaced. And even though Peerie is not the exact same yarn weight, the first version was a great stepping stone to making this fingering weight version. It really is almost identical – just some quick calculations to adjust for a different gauge. (This newly finished Brooklyn Tweed sweater is my final version of the yoke sweater that I will write up a pattern for!)

I thought that making a fingering weight sweater would be daunting and take approximately 8236958439 hours. It truly didn’t take half as long as I thought it would, and it was incredibly fun to knit and especially satisfying with this scrumptious yarn (which is approx. 10000x more luxurious than what I’m used to)!

I bought this Brooklyn Tweed Peerie yarn over 2 years ago. In 2017, I went to my first Our Maker Life event in Toronto and snagged 6 hanks of Brooklyn Tweed – 2 in Kettle (black), 2 in Hammock (white), and 3 in Burnished (a camel brown). This was the first time I ever purchased luxury yarn, or anything besides what was sold at Michael’s. I knew I wanted to save them for a special project, and here we are.. 2 and a half years later and I finally put them to good use!

I feel like I just graduated yarn-high-school (department store yarn) and now I’m off to yarn University (luxury yarn) where there are a bunch of sophisticated yarns and my world is really opening up. Anyone else? No? Just me? OK.

Patterns

This is the part where I usually tell you about some other patterns that use Brooklyn Tweed Peerie but you could really use this yarn in place of any fingering weight yarn. Brooklyn Tweed does however have a dedicated pattern page for patterns that use Peerie if you wanna check out some designs made with it!

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Before we get into this yarn review, let me preface this by saying that if I don’t love it, I won’t use it, and I definitely won’t recommend it to you in a blog post, promise! 🙂

There have been a few yarns I’ve used lately that did not make the cut because they just didn’t feel great. THIS yarn feels incredible and you will love it.

Yarn Specs

• Fingering weight (14 wpi)
• 210 yards(192 meters) per 50 grams (1.76 ounces)
• 100% USA-grown Merino Wool
• Recommended needle size 2¾-3½ mm (US 2-4)
• Developed, sourced, processed, spun and dyed 100% in the USA.
• 4-ply construction
• Worsted-spun (opposed to woolen-spun: learn more about woolen- vs. worsted-spun here)
• 45 colours to choose from

My Thoughts

The first word that comes to my mind when describing this yarn: BOUNCY. To be honest, before using Peerie, I didn’t really understand what people meant when they described yarn as “bouncy”.. but it really is bouncy! No matter what you do to your piece of fabric, it just bounces right back in place. Even just squishing the yarn cake, you can feel it just bounce right back into it’s original shape. For contrast, think cotton yarn which has zero bounce.

Peerie is twisted in a hank so you have to wind it into a cake with a ball winder and swift which is always fun!

In reviewing this yarn, I absolutely need to say that when wearing this finished garment, you can feel the quality of this yarn and the difference between this yarn + department store acrylic is like night and day. Like.. very noticeable. This sweater feels unlike the other sweaters I’ve made because this one is actually breathable. This aspect alone is worth the extra $. Especially if you’re going to make a garment that you’re going to spend 100+ hours knitting.. you want it to feel good! I don’t feel hot in this sweater like I often do in other sweaters I’ve made, and the stitch definition is just gorgeous. It’s so comfortable to wear, and even after blocking, the stitches still looks perfect with zero pilling.

(One of the issues I  had with my first sample was that from simply STEAM blocking it, it became pilled to the max and basically unwearable.)

This yarn feels 10x better than most of the yarn in my stash and I think that it has officially turned me into a self-proclaimed yarn-snob. It might even be my new favourite yarn. (Chainette is a close second!)

Peerie recommendation: 10/10. Obsessed.

PS. This pattern will be available in March/April 2020.

Thanks so much for reading!

Happy making,

Janine xo