Yarn Review: Patons SWS – Way better than Tofu! (by Jen Chambers)

Decided to try and felt using Patons SWS yarn.  It’s 70% Wool, 30% Soy, so I thought it would probably felt up nicely.   I had a couple of skeins of SWS which stands for Soy Wool Stripes in colorway Natural Earth and thought I’d try making an iPad cover.  I don’t have an iPad, but one day I hope to and I’ll have a beautiful cover to keep it safe from scratches.  I didn’t have a pattern, but figured I just try and see if I could work it out.

I cast on 45 stitches on size 8 needles.  I knit the piece in garter stitch and it used just about the entire 2 skeins of yarn.  The yarn itself is soft and knits up nicely.  The yarn has a slightly different  “twist” then normal worsted weight yarn.  It’s not twisted as tightly and when untwisted it doesn’t consist of 4 threads like most worsted weight.  Instead it untwists into about 50 very fine “hairs” that create a fuzz when separated.  The yarn is self striping and the color changes were subtle from row to row and the pattern repeat was easy to anticipate when it came time to join the 2^nd skein of yarn.

Finished size before felting was 22.5” x 9.5”.  I sewed up the side seams and began the felting process.

I watched closely as the piece felted to make sure I didn’t go too far.  The finished measurement I was shooting for was about 9.5” x 7.5”. I felted this in the washing machine and it took 2 wash cycles to get to the measurement I wanted.

I pulled out the piece and rinsed with cold water then used the book in the picture as my drying form.  I put the book into a zip-top bag, and slid it inside the iPad cover while it dried over the next few days.

After the piece was dry, the felting process had made the finished piece quite fuzzy all over.  So I took a disposable razor and cut away the fuzz and the finished piece was exactly what I wanted.

Overall, I was very pleased with this yarn.  It’s a beautiful yarn that looks great whether you decide to use it for felting or just a normal knitting project.