A day late...but at least I'm not a dollar short

So I was over on the Major Knitter blog, and lo and behold, it's the annual knitting and crochet blog week. Whadya know? I didn't know there was such a thing, but I figured I'd give it a shot...since really, I don't have anything else to talk about, really.

I'm starting a day lay, but I'm going to go ahead and answer all of the blog prompts, anyway.

The one from yesterday is:

Part of any fibre enthusiast’s hobby is an appreciation of yarn. Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.

Tips: It is a good idea, if possible, to choose a yarn that you adore and a yarn that just didn’t work for you. You do not need to be critical of any yarn if you do not feel comfortable in doing so, but perhaps you came to realise that one yarn wasn’t suitable for a particular project, if possible you could blog about what you have come to learn about choosing the right yarn, or your love of experimenting with fibres.

My current favorite yarn is Claudia Handpaints sock yarn. It's squishy, soft, pretty, and comes in all kinds of different colors (sadly, my LYS never carries more than two at a time, so I think I'm going to have to switch to buying it online). It also has the added benefit of not making me itch like crazy. It was the first superwash wool I found that didn't make me sneeze, break out, or scratch like someone had filled my socks with itching powder. I don't know what the base yarn is, but it appears to be the wool processed in such a way that I can wear it next to my skin without a problem.

My least favorite yarn, I'm sad to say, was a very well intentioned gift. I like the yarn when it was in hank form, but as soon as I tried to use it, it turned into clown barf. The background was a really bright turquoise, and it had noils of orange, yellow, purple, green and red in it. I tried crocheting it. I tried knitting it. I tried large needles, I tried small needles. I tried working it flat and in the round. I tried long rows, I tried short rows. No matter what I did with this yarn, it was awful. It looked like someone had stuck Bozo the clown through a pastamaker and tried to spin the noodles. The only halfway success solution I found was to hold it together with one strand of a a solid turquoise yarn of about the same shade. I had less than half a ball, though, and when I discovered the yarn had been discontinued, I gave up. Frustrated, I believe I donated it to a 4-H group or a nursing home or somesuch group that is always looking for craft supplies. I felt horrible doing it, since it was an artyarn and rather expensive, but there simply wasn't anything I could do with it.

And there you have it. My best and worst yarn experiences.