Scheepjes Catona Cotton

As we start to welcome back the warmer weather it’s also time to say hello to some beautiful new cottons! We’re expanding our range of plant fibres like linen and cotton in preparation for the summer projects you have planned. First up we have these cute little bundles from Dutch brand Scheepjes.

The Scheepjes Catona is a pure cotton which has been mercerised, a process that smooths and strengthens the fibres. We love this because it means the yarn has an incredible silk-like lustre, which not only makes it a dream to wear and work with, you also get an even tension and great stitch definition.

Catona is a versatile weight, ranging from a 4ply to a sport weight depending what needle or hook you use. Cotton is often notorious for splitting, but we are happy to report that our swatching had been stress free as the smooth fibres have remained neatly twisted and easy to work with.

Scheepjes also have a wonderful collection of tutorials and free patterns on their website. Each ball is 25 grams and great for mixing and matching colours in small amounts – which is exactly what we’ve been doing this week at Loop.

Catona is ideal for some pretty little granny squares, the perfect little portable summer project! We used a 3mm hook for these samples.

We kept it simple with a classic granny square, but why not try your hand (or hook!) at some more styles?

‘And how can I block and prepare all those squares once I’ve finished them?’ we hear you cry! Well you’re in luck as we now have an amazing piece of kit that can block all those squares to a uniformed shape in one go.

We’re pretty excited about this clever tool. Simply screw in the pegs into the wooden board to make the outline of the size you need and stack your squares up to 15cm high. We found that we didn’t even need to wet block these squares as the crisp nature of the Catona cotton meant that with just a bit of a stretch overnight they straightened out beautifully.

As the Catona is machine washable, we’ve also been lining up the baby knits. How about the cutest little socks to celebrate the arrival of a summer baby? Two balls of Catona will make a pair, so chose a palette of ice cream shades to stripe together.

We’ll be bringing you more information about the new yarns for summer that are arriving soon!

One final thing is to announce the winner of last weeks competition. After our Rosemaling tutorial we gave you lovely readers the chance to win a copy of Stitch Encyclopaedia:Embroidery and the winner is …. Robyn Finn! Congratulations! We’ll be in touch to let you know how to claim your prize.

Thank you to everyone for entering and your answers as to what to feature on our next tutorial. Don’t worry if you missed out this time, we’ll have lots more giveaways in the future.

Happy Knitting and Crocheting!