About a month ago I was contacted by the folks over at Stitchcraft Marketing to see if I would be interested in knitting trying a new to me yarn from Bijou Basin Ranch. Specifically, Bijou Basin Ranch was promoting their ModeKnit line, a batch of Bijou Basin’s base yarns that had been dyed by designer Annie Modesitt. Having never knit with yak before, I eagerly said yes.
Bijou Basin generously sent me a skein of Tibetan Dream which is their fingering weight yarn that is 85% yak down and 15% nylon in the Fuchsia Ombre Flow colorway.
The yarn was amazing! Although you could definitely use it for socks (and get great cushy warm socks at that!) I decided I wanted to wear this amazing fiber around my neck. So I searched patterns on Ravelry and decided on the Starshower Cowl by Hilary Smith Callis.
I found that using a sharp needle helped with the knitting as the yarn was just a wee bit splitty – mostly likely due to the yak down being a shorter staple. But I loved the hand of the yarn and I felt like I got excellent stitch definition. The pattern and the yarn worked really well together.
The cowl knit up quickly and I was able to use all but about a yard of the yarn – I didn’t want to waste any! The only part of the experience I wasn’t 100% pleased with was the color. As you can see in the finished photos, the yarn is two colored – on one end is a bright vibrant pink, and on the other end is a more muted lavender. From the words “ombre” and “flow” I expected the yarn to be more of a gradient; that is I expected the colors to transition gracefully from one to the other over a longer area, much like a gradient would. In this case I felt like the colors and the lack of a transition were a bit less sophisticated than I would have liked them to be; I find that the colors break up the knit into two ends rather than transitioning throughout the piece.
That said, I would totally order this yarn again. Bijou Basin has some of their own colorways, as well as working with other artists like Miss Babs and Lost City Knits to create other colors on Tibetan Dream and other base yarns. I look forward to trying some of the other gorgeous colorways and other luxury fibers in the future.
A special thank you to Stitchcraft Marketing and the folks at Bijou Basin Ranch who generously sent me this yarn (retail: $49.95) for free. I received no other compensation for this review. All opinions and photos are my own.