Looking at some projects on ravelry for the http://www.interweavestore.com/store/p/681-Phiaro-Scarf.aspx?af=ravelry, I noticed how beautiful the soy and bamboo scarves are.
I’ve never knitted with either of those types of yarn but am very interested now. I mostly use wool, or wool blends. For those who knit with those kinds of yarns,what are they like in terms of feel, stretch, etc.?
Thanks!
I haven’t had a vast experience of them, but I both liked and didn’t like them. The ones I tried were fingering and 4 ply. Like silk, they had little stretch and give to them (at least the ones I tried, anyway), and had a beautiful drapey hand. This made them rather slippery to knit with, but worth it because I like the hand of the fabric so much. One of them had great stitch definition (soy), the other one was a little too slippery (bamboo).
Thing is, depending on what yarn you’re using, your results might be totally different. Guess you’d just have to try a skein and do some swatches…
Soy doesn’t stretch, but I thought Bamboo does. I tried to knit with a fingering weight soy yarn which was very nice, but it needed to be knit with much smaller needles than I like to use. I could work with a heavier yarn though. There are soy and bamboo blends that many people like to use.
Thank you for the info. I love stitch definition, but I’m not a fan of things not stretching. Knitting with cotton, for example, was not something I enjoyed because it is so different from wool and doesn’t “stretch” the way wool does.
However, that scarf is amazing and I really want to make one for my mom for Christmas, so I may just try the bamboo or soy anyway. 
When you say “hand” does that mean how it hangs?
Thanks againnnnnn!
I meant, I hadn’t heard about a finished soy yarn garment stretching; though there’s not a lot of flex in the yarn, it’s not at all like knitting with cotton.
‘Hand’ means how it feels I think…
Yeah, cotton is much more crisp and stiff than soy, at least the ones I’ve tried.
Hand is how it feels, how it hangs, just basically how the fabric looks and feels. A fabric might have a soft but stiff hand (such as polar fleece), or a soft but fluid hand (like silk), or a crisp and stiff hand (like many cottons), or a crisp yet soft/fluid hand (like well washed linen).
Thank you so much, ladiiiies! :cheering:
Just be aware that they are actually manmade fibers or a type of rayon. I just read a bulletin from the FTC that yarn and fiber sellers can no longer call the yarn or fiber bamboo unless they can produce a lab test showing that the fiber still has bamboo dna in it. The vast majority of bamboo yarn is made in a lab and no longer shares any relationship with bamboo and so has no health benefits that some have claimed. If I can find the FTC link I’ll post it. I believe it came out in Aug. of this year.
More info on bamboo and soy yarns. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/buildingandtextiles/transcript.pdf
From about page 30 until you get bored with the transcript.