cotton blend reviews
Ice Yarns Alara & Alara Batik
Details
Alara and Alara Batik are 8ply cotton/acrylic blend Turkish yarns.
- They come in 50g balls with 140m per ball.
- 50% cotton, 50% acrylic.
- A 4 mm hook or needles are recommended.
- Gauge is not specified
- Ice Yarns have 19 variegated shades of the Batik available and 56 solid colours of the Alara, 27 of which are available in my online store.
- The label recommends a warm machine wash.
- It is labelled as a number 3 weight yarn which is equivalent to an 8ply or double knit (dk)
Find the pattern for the Cat Ear Beanie here.
Read my blog post on Tapestry Crochet here.
Ice Yarns Lorena Print
Details
Lorena Print is an 8ply cotton/acrylic blend Turkish yarn.
- It comes in 50g balls with 160m per ball.
- 55% cotton, 45% acrylic.
- A 3-4 mm hook or needles are recommended.
- Gauge is 30 rows by 24 stitches to 10cm x 10cm.
- Ice Yarns have 23 variegated shades available, 12 of which you can find in my online store.
- The label recommends a warm machine wash.
- It is labelled as a number 3 weight yarn which is equivalent to a 8ply or double knit (dk).
Forgive the state of my model…she’s seen better days 🫣.
Unfortunately the original free pattern is now unavailable.
In Summary
- I found Alara, Alara Batik and Lorena Print cotton blend very similar to work with by comparison.
- All are a soft cotton blend I would be happy to make clothing and accessories for baby through to adults as well as home decor.
- Alara and Alara Batik are exactly the same construction, just dyed differently.
- I enjoyed crocheting with both Alara and Lorena Print equally.
- The solid colours of Alara have lovely stitch definition and make for great photos.
- I expected the Lorena Print to split a little because of the looser construction, but neither yarn split at all using an aluminium hook.(These are my standard go to hooks, so I haven’t tried with another type of hook)
- I bought one colourway of each yarn to try and I loved the way both colours crocheted up.
- The hats pictured have been crocheted on a 5mm hook.
Differences
- The construction of the Alara Batik has a tighter twist compared to the Lorena Print.
- After crocheting with both yarns, the exact same pattern slouch hat, I found the hat made from the Lorena Print yarn to be slightly smaller than the Alara Batik.