The promise of huge yarn sales led me to the yarn aisle at my favorite craft store. Browsing for something special, and suitable for a baby boy, I paced the aisles several times. The feel test was well underway and I was wishing for knitted or crocheted swatches of a couple of my favs. Pipsqueak was soft and mushy and it was clear that it would remain cloud like even after the blanket was made. So after checking out the free patten on the yarn band, I tossed three huge skeins of the yarn into my basket and headed for the checkout counter. So how did Pipsqueak perform?
The yarn has an amazingly soft texture. The yarn is fuzzy and also has a great drape once a piece of fabric is worked up. Pipsqueak is easy to hold and the fibers don’t dry out your skin like other yarns do when working with them.
While working with bulky weight yarn typically means that the project will go fast, in this case, extra care is needed to find the stitches during a crochet project. My eyes had to stay on my project as opposed to watching TV and feeling my way through with just a few glances down. Using my fingers, it was necessary to find the next stitch, often stretching the fabric slightly to locate where to insert the crochet hook. Here’s a video demonstrating what crocheting with Pipsqueak is like!
So is Bernat Pipsqueak easier to knit with? Yes! Very much so! Knitting with Pipsqueak was much less laborious than crocheting. The stitches are easier to locate when working on knitting needles, the only thing that I had to watch out for was accidentally grabbing the stitch in the row below, but if/when that happened, the mistake was easy to catch and correct before moving forward. Want to see what I mean?
Stitch definition is low with Bernat’s Pipsqeak. The fabric turns into a soft cloud where all the stitches disappear. I especially liked how I was able to use a double crochet stitch with a larger than recommended hook size to achieve a soft and flowy blanket in a fraction of the time it would take with another bulky weight yarn.
Overall Pipsqueak was fun to work with and a great value. Bernat offers skeins in two different sizes, 100g and 250g, so mixing and matching the various colors within a project is easy and economical. My only disappointment was that I was looking for a light grey color to match a baby nursery and that color isn’t available despite how popular it is in today’s modern home decor. That aside, this yarn is great and I’d highly recommend it!
This yarn is good for:
- Blankets
- Scarves
- Small Toys
- Accents/ Embellishments
Avoid using this yarn for:
- Tight gauge projects
Technical Details:
Weight: Bulky
Recommended Knitting Needle: 5.5 mm, US size 9
Recommended Crochet Hook: 5.5 mm, US I/9
Care Instructions: Machine Washable and Dryable