In March I told Jay that I would not buy any more yarn until my birthday (in June). I’m not sure he thought that I could actually do it. It wasn’t that hard, though. Whenever I would get the urge to buy I would walk upstairs and look at this:

That was enough to put me off of buying anymore yarn.

Then my birthday rolled around and the ban had been lifted. I had kept my word and didn’t buy any yarn at all for almost three months. Then I went to Wal-Mart during my lunch break and all bets were off when I walked into the clearance aisle. I came home with four skeins.

The two gray skeins are baby yarn, and the ones on the right are the bigger Super Saver skeins. When I was looking at the clearance yarns another lady was digging through the pile as well. She mentioned the brightness of the yarn and I told her that I crochet blankets for Project Linus. She does, too! Obviously I’m not the only one in my area making blankets, but I’d never met anybody else up to this point.

After those came home with me I told Jay that I needed to buy the yarn for a Christmas gift that I wanted to make. The problem was that the only yarn I had found that was close to what I was looking for would have to be ordered online from Turkey.

I was first introduced to Ice Yarns when I came across an unboxing video on YouTube. It was Christa, at The Secret Yarnery, unboxing almost a 100 pound yarn order! First off, I was flabbergasted by ordering 100 pounds of yarn, but also I couldn’t imagine unboxing that much yarn, either. Christa lives in Kenya and doesn’t have the ability to just pop down to the local A.C. Moore to purchase yarn. She orders 99% of her yarn from Ice Yarns. She always says how inexpensive it is and how great the quality is of this yarn.

I decided that I wanted to use their Pastel Cotton for the Christmas project. If you look at their website today you can see that it’s $.87 per 50 gram ball. The thing about ordering from Ice Yarns, though, is that you can’t buy just one ball. They come in lots (or packages) so you have to buy them in their lot size. The Pastel Cotton is an 8 pack, so it ends up being $7.00 per package. This yarn is 50% cotton and 50% acrylic, it’s washable, and it looked interesting. This is the color that I decided to order:

It is Orchid-Pink-Cream-Gold. I ordered one package of it and thought I was good. Then I started crocheting the project and began to panic. Looking at how little I had crocheted with one ball I knew that I would run out before the project was finished. I couldn’t let that happen! And then… Ice Yarns sent an email saying that the Pastel Cotton was on promotion for $.62/ball ($4.96/package). In order to make the shipping worth it, though, I needed to put in a larger order. You see, it’s very quick shipping from Turkey, but you pay for it. I did some quick figuring and found a price range that I could live with and feel like I’d gotten the most out of my shipping cost.

My package arrived on July 3rd. Jay asked if I was going to do my own unboxing video (apparently he’s noticed me watching quite a few of these), but I don’t have a YouTube account and I don’t think that I would do very well with a vlog. I wasn’t going to post my unboxing here, but then it was requested that I do so.

My 7-3-19 Ice Yarns Haul:

I had already opened my package and fondled the yarn before I took these pictures. In my first Ice Yarns order I had purchased one package each of the Pink colored Pastel Cotton and then a purple-blue color. When I did my 2nd order I thought that I should get another package of the purple-blue just in case I want to do something that will require a lot of it.

This had to be a big order in order to justify the shipping cost, so I decided to get yarn for another gift that I want to make. Since I’m pretty sure the recipient of this doesn’t read my blog, I can post a picture of the project:

This is called the Cathedral Rose Window Afghan and was patterned after the big stained glass window that was in the Notre Dame Cathedral prior to the fire. This pattern can be purchased at Annie’s.  They use Red Heart for this project, but I wanted an even softer yarn. I knew that it would cost me even more to buy a premium yarn, but it would be worth it if I could find the right variegated yarn. I searched high and low and finally decided that this would work okay:

This afghan requires quite a bit of yarn. The top variegated looked like colors you would find in a stained glass window. It is called Cakes Blues in the color Rainbow. I then chose the purple and turquoise Saver yarn as the accent colors. I have a lot of A.C. Moore’s Stitch Studio black, so I didn’t worry about ordering that color.

This is how much yarn I’ve purchased for this afghan:

I hope that’s enough! I did some comparison shopping online with a runner-up variegated that I thought might work from A.C. Moore. Even with the shipping cost, it was slightly cheaper per ounce to purchase from Ice Yarns.

There’s still more…

I tried to buy yarn with specific projects in mind. In my first Ice Yarn order I had purchased these:

The one on the left is Magic Glitz in the blue-black colorway. The one on the right is Magic Light in a gray-white colorway. I have these pegged for shawls.

I want to use the Magic Glitz to make the Erigeneia shawl.

(The color on this picture is bad because my printer was running out of ink).

The more I thought about it, though, the more I thought that it might be a bit too much to make the entire thing out of the Glitz. The Magic Light comes in the same blue-black colorway, so I decided to purchase a package of that so I will start the shawl without glitz and then do the ruffle in the glitz.

Won’t that be pretty?!

Christa designed a really gorgeous shawl called the Aurora Dawn Crochet Shawl where she used the Magic Glitz and some Baby Cotton. She raved about both of these yarns, so I’m thinking about using the Magic Light in gray shades along with white Baby Cotton.

I will have to figure out what I want to do when I actually get to this one.

As I kept adding to my cart I was keeping an eye on the shipping cost. Again, to justify the cost of shipping I had to add more yarn to my cart. I just HAD to. It’s the fiscally-responsible thing to do!

I went on a hunt to see what interesting colors they had that I might not have used in a blanket. I like the variegated yarns, too, so when I came across this I threw it in the cart.

This is Cakes Baby Lollipop in Gray-Yellow shades. I know that I have a lot of solid gray in different shades in my stash. I didn’t want to make it too blah, though, so I decided I needed to add some pop. I found some yellow that also got tossed into my cart.

It’s not the exact same color, but it will definitely give a blanket some POP! This is Classic Aran in the color Gold. After I get another blanket done I might quickly kit this one up so that I can start it. I’m a bit anxious to see what I can turn out.

Staying in the theme with Project Linus I found another Cakes Baby Lollipop.

This one has some interesting shades of blue in it. The colorway is Turquoise-Gray-Blue shades. Since it’s predominantly blue I might accent it with the gray and maybe some off-white or perhaps a light blue. It will depend upon what calls to me when I start laying them out side-by-side to kit up.

That has to be it, right? Nope. I managed to find one more interesting yarn that I decided to give a try.

This is Harmony. On the website it had looked interesting, but when I pulled it out of the shipping bag I was a bit underwhelmed. Then I decided to see how soft it is, so I pulled it out of the protective cellophane bag.

Okay. Now I’m impressed! I have NO IDEA how this will stitch up. Will it look kind of like a muddled mess? Will you be able to see the tweed-look? I am definitely going to pair it with a solid brown and a solid blue. This one might have to get kitted up soon, too.

Finally, that’s it! That’s all of my Ice Yarn haul. I have no idea where I’m going to put it because I still have two totes of kitted blankets sitting in my sewing room.

But here’s the really bad thing… I just found a project that I want to make for my sister for Christmas. It calls for a bulky weight yarn, which I don’t have. All of mine is a worsted #4 weight. Which means that in order to complete it I will have to buy MORE yarn. I just did some quick looking around and the yarn I’m seeing at Hobby Lobby I will need to buy 21 skeins!! YIKES. This is quickly becoming an expensive project! I then hopped over to Ice Yarns to see what they have and I found something that will work. I will only need 14 cakes and even with the high price of shipping, it will still be cheaper than the Hobby Lobby yarn (which is on sale!!). *sigh* I swear, once this yarn is purchased I am going on a yarn diet!!