I recently received a skein of yarn from Prism Yarns called Tencel Tape. Tencel is the more eco-friendly cousin to Rayon. It’s made from cellulose, in this case wood pulp, like rayon, but the chemical processing is a “closed circut” meaning they clean and reuse all the chemicals involved instead of dumping them into the environment.
I’ve been intrigued by tencel yarns for some time, but it’s hard to find 100% tencel, and those that are out there are mostly lace weight. (Just our yarns has some lovely laceweight tencel). Prism is a hand-dying company and they are famous for their novelty yarn “Stuff.” I was pleasantly surprised to see this more subdued yarn come out of their dyepots.
The yarn is a knitted construction–tencel thread is machine knit into a tube and subsequently hand-dyed by the folks at Prism Yarns. Like Rayon, Tencel has drape and sheen and softness, this tape construction is a bit on the bulky side. I used a 6mm hook to get an appropriate gauge when crocheting it.
One of the nice things about the yarn is the color saturation. My photos don’t do it justice. The colors are truly beautiful. Prism offers the yarn in 64 variegated colorways and 66 “sandwashed” solids.
When I swatched, I first tried a 5mm hook and the result was way too dense:
I then switched to a 6mm hook and the swatch was much nicer.
It also makes a very pretty solid fabric:
It can be very hard sometimes to crochet with variegated yarns because everything ends up looking like “camouflage.” Tencel Tape seems like it was dyed with crocheters in mind because the short repeats of color mean you don’t end up with splotches and strange color pooling.
I’m enjoying working on this v-stitch swatch that I think I’ll turn it into a little scarf à la Kim’s Model Citizen.