We’re trying something new with our yarn reviews! Instead of showing you a bunch of new yarns, all in a single swatch, we’re showing you just one yarn but in several different swatches.

I hope this deep-dive will be helpful!

But first, the details of the yarn…

Details

Berroco Gaia

70% Cotton, 30% Polyester

Knitting Gauge: 22 sts and 30 rows over 4″ using a size 6/4 mm needle

Crochet Gauge: 20 sc and 24 rows over 4″ using a size F/3.75 mm hook

Quaker Ridging (Knit)

The yarn seems made for this type of stitch!

While the yarn is a tweed, it doesn’t seem to fight this type of pattern. I can easily see both the ridges and the tweed’s color changes.

Texture (Knit)

I knit this next swatch in a knit/purl texture. Can you see the little triangles?

While I can see they’re there, they’re not as pronounced. The yarn isn’t highlighting them.

This is a great example of pairing gone wrong. The excellent yarn seems to fight this stitch pattern.

This doesn’t mean it’s a bad yarn – at all! But it does show you that you need to be smart about your yarn choice for a given pattern.

Every yarn does NOT pair equally well with every stitch pattern.

Wave Stitch (crochet)

I also wanted to see how it did in a crochet project. Would that be any different?

I’m happy to say that it worked equally well in crochet!

Don’t Do This

I started out making a crochet swatch in a pattern that required me to be able to see the previous row and insert my hook in the right place.

I found that EXTREMELY hard. The combination of the tweed and the color variation just made it impossible for me to see where I needed to go.

This was a great learning for me (both as a crocheter and as a yarn reviewer) – doing these deep dives won’t always result in a great swatch. In other words, doing these deep dives will take more time.

I think it’s time well-spent, but you tell me. What do you think?