Did you know? Berroco is the US distributor for LANGYARNS—a Swiss-based yarn company that’s been in the same family since it’s inception nearly 150 years ago. Since this week’s KnitBits is all about LANGYARNS and their new Ravelry PDF store, I figured I’d take a look at one of their yarns for this week’s swatching post. I chose to knit up a swatch using their Sol Dégradé yarn.
LANGYARNS Sol Dégradé is a 100% cotton tape yarn—similar to Berroco Elba—and is incredibly soft. It’s listed as an Aran weight yarn, knitting at a gauge of 18 stitches and 26 rows on a US 8 or 9 (5 or 5.5 mm) needle. For my swatch, I used a size 8 needle.
Knitting with Sol Dégradé is a dream. The yarn glides through the fingers easily, making it easy to achieve a consistent tension, and the finished fabric is quite soft. Two notes to consider: because of the yarn construction and softness, I’d recommend using a wooden or plastic needle to help keep a grip on the yarn, and you want to be sure to not pull too tight—tape yarns can be very stretchy and since this is 100% cotton, the stitches could get warped if pulled excessively.
One of the reasons that Sol Dégradé is so popular is the available colorways. Currently there are 29 different colorways for this yarn, and they’re all long-color repeating shades that range from highly contrasting to more muted tonal shades. For this swatch I used shade 783.062, which would have eventually gone from the light pink to a dark reddish brown.
Lang has some great patterns available for Sol Dégradé—unfortunately they don’t seem to be in Ravelry just yet, but you can find them in the pattern books that have been released. If you prefer to shop digitally, you can search for “Lang Pattern books” and locate many online retailers who have the pattern books available for sale. You can also use our Store Locator page to search for Lang yarns and also locate pattern books near you—be sure to call the shop for availability.