Yarn review: Sweet Paprika Designs Crescendo mini-skeins

Towards the end of last year, the lovely folks at Sweet Paprika Designs (an independent Canadian yarn dyeing company) sent me some yarn as part of their yarn support programme.  I had submitted the design concept for Storm Dance and they liked it enough to send me two of their Crescendo mini-skein gradient sets.

Each set has 6 mini skeins of 100% superwash merino.  Each mini is 20g/87yds, 120g/522yds per set.  I had Daydream and Deep Blue Sea which seamlessly blend with each other to create a stunning gradient of blues, from the very palest aqua to deepest ocean.  When it arrived (much earlier than I had expected, thank you very much to the Canadian and UK post services) there was much stroking and squishing of the little skeins, not just by me but also by my youngest daughter, who has inherited my addiction to appreciation of all things yarn.  My oldest, less of a squisher but still with an eye for colour, admired and told me what a marvellous job I have.  Oh yes, having to squish yarn for a living.  I really am very lucky.

Anyway, back to the yarn.  The skeins rolled into balls easily (not always the case).  The yarn is soft and smooth, lovely to handle.  The stitch definition is incredible, particularly important with the Storm Dance design, which uses stitches worked only in the front loop to create the wave effect of the stitches.

I also very much appreciated the smoothness of the yarn when I was unpicking stitches (the design process is not always smooth itself).  No snagging or sticky stitches at all.

And did I mention what a delight it was to see the colour progression as I joined each new shade?  I lost quite a bit of design time gazing happily at my growing wrap.

You can find Sweet Paprika Designs here, their Crescendo gradient sets here and my Storm Dance Wrap pattern here.