Marriner Yarns – a yarn review…

Have any of you heard of the British yarn company Marriner Yarns ? Have you used any of their yarns before? I had not heard of them until very recently when they contacted me reaching out to see if I would be interested in getting to know their yarns a little more. I like this kind of collaboration… it’s a two way process which works well for everyone – I get free samples of yarn kindly sent to me and in return the company of course gets some free advertising!

I was very happy to say yes and agreed to try some yarns and come up with some new designs as well as review the yarns on my blog. Although the yarn samples were sent to me free, I’m under no obligation to write anything other than my own thoughts… 🙂

So I received a big parcel of yarns… it’s always wonderful to get yarn through the post and this was no exception- what a fine package it was!

I just had to take a more artistic photo of the yarns piled high in our front garden.. they look good there don’t they…

The yarns are all very affordable and I would say that Marriner Yarns are good value yarns at low prices…their 100g DK acrylic is just £1 per ball! The yarns sent to me were mostly of an acrylic content, some blended with wool and there is a range of cotton yarns available too. I was very excited to read on the Marriner Yarns website blog romney-marsh-sheep-update that they have now got their own flock of sheep with a view to producing their own ‘Marriner wool’ in the near future- I really love the sound of that!

When looking through the yarns over on the website when I was considering which yarns I’d like to try, I was immediately drawn to the ‘Empress Chunky’ range.

These chunky balls of yarn come in 100g balls and are a good mix of 80% acrylic with 20% wool – oh and the colours! It’s a variegated yarn with fabulous colour combinations and the shade names are all coastal and water inspired! They have Lagoon, Sandcastle, Atlantic, Pacific, Ocean and Seashell – how perfect for me is that! I chose the Lagoon colourway with its blues, greens and browns and couldn’t resist crocheting with it straight away…

I thought of a ‘one ball’ hat… 1 ball of yarn to make 1 hat… and I love the way chunky yarn grows so quickly!

…and I absolutely love the finished hat! I can honestly say it’s sooo comfortable and was perfectly timed for a cold spell of weather that came our way…

I’m going to be making a matching shawl or scarf so will release the pattern as a set once finished. I absolutely adore this yarn… there were no knots in the yarn at all and it crocheted up beautifully and super quick… I would say try not to make any mistakes because when I tried to unravel a little of my own crochet it was tricky as the yarn kept catching, probably due to the wool content.

As for the other yarns, well they have a range called ‘Mermaid’ (another perfect ‘Coastal Crochet’ name)…

And I crocheted these into a set of coasters…

It’s good value acrylic and again I like the colours.

I haven’t yet got round to crocheting with the other yarns…

I just need more hours in the day to get round to crocheting the ideas I have got for some of these yarns.

I’m a yarn lover through and through… and Marriner Yarns provides very good value yarns. Their DK acrylic is one of the best value I’ve seen. The colour ranges on their cotton and DK acrylic are limited though compared to some bigger yarn companies.

I love variety and although I adore hand dyed yarns from independent yarn dyers, unusual and specialist yarns as well as huge colour choices from bigger companies, there is certainly a place for good value yarns like Marriners.

And for me it’s the ‘Empress Chunky’ that wins the day in this yarn review – I loved it so much that I can honestly say I ordered some more, this time as a paying customer… I have a queue of loved ones wanting a hat so I purchased a ball in the Sandcastle colourway and another in Atlantic…

Empress Chunky is a unique yarn in gorgeous colours and I would certainly recommend it for quick and easy crochet projects. Very soon I’ll share my ‘One Ball Hat’ and Shawl patterns using Empress Chunky…

Happy Crocheting Everyone! 🙂