The First Review- Red Heart: With Love

Hello and welcome to my first yarn review. Just a quick reminder that these are in no way sponsored I am just doing them for fun because I have a great love of yarn. With that out of the way, I decided to go with Red Hearts line "With Love" to start with. I have been working with this yarn a lot lately and have a lot of it sitting around in different dye lots.

I have generally tried to stay away from Red Heart yarns because of the stigma they have of being cheap, scratchy, and more suited to children's crafts than crochet or knitting. These factors go right out the window when it comes to their lines other than the so apply named "Super Saver" (don't worry, we will be getting to that soon.) I will get more into my personal opinion at the end, for now let us start by talking about the...

Texture:
As I alluded to above, this is a much nicer to work with yarn than it's inexpensive counterpart. It is light and fluffy without that silky or waxy feeling you get from yarns like Red Hearts confusingly named "Soft" line (for the longest time I could not figure out which yarn was which). As a crafter who primarily makes toys, I love the soft feel the yarn maintains even once crocheted tightly. But be aware the white is a bit stiffer and varigated tend to be softer. It is not as soft as a baby yarn but definitely as soft as you will get for the price
My one big problem with it comes from how light and soft it is, this yarn really likes to unwind and strip while sewing with it. When I can I will use a different yarn to connect pieces to avoid this problem.

 When it comes to texture I can absolutely advise this yarn for something soft and fluffy.

Yarn Weight:
Ah yarn weight, one of the least consistent things when it comes to different yarns. This yarn is graded as a 4 or worsted for size I-G hook or 8 (us) needles. However it is up to twice the size of other yarns in the same category. This yarn is about as big as you can get before getting into the 5 or bulky yarns (which is an even broader category). While this might be confusing to new crafters, an experienced one will know where different brands fall on the size scale and plan accordingly. At least you could if the yarns within this line were consistent. This is where this yarn really falls flat. Take a look at this picture.

That is a strand of Violetta, Plum Jam and Peacock side by side. That is a ridiculous amount of difference between three yarns by the same company, in the same line, all supposed to be the same size. As long as you have large pieces side by side you will usually be fine as long as you aren't mixing in the varigateds (which is a pity because I love those colors together!) but if you are looking to do color-work definitely look somewhere else.

If you want consistency across different colors I cannot advise this yarn.

Color Consistency:
When it comes to different dye lots well this yarn does not have them. This works out in your favor because whenever you buy it your colors will look the same. I have bought a skein online from joanns and run out halfway through a project and had no problem finishing with a skein bought at Walmart months later. They have recently started putting out smaller skeins and the colors have not changed. I'm sure if you go too far back and have stored a yarn for a while you will run into problems, and you will always be safest buying all the yarn you will need for a project at once. But if you are like me and like starting projects in the middle of the night using what you have on hand, this yarn is great.

Color consistency is as good as you can hope for, no problems here.

Color Variety:
This is something very important to me. When making a piece based off of a TV show or video games, having the right color is important and the more shades a yarn has the more likely I am to be able to use it. So how does With Love shape up?

This is just what they have at Joann's website. On Red Hearts one site they have one more color, an appropriately named  Stones which seems to be new. This gives us a pretty good variety of your major colors. You're missing a basic primary blue and orange but the variety gives you enough to work with, about as much as you can expect. I would like to see more variegated option but as I do not use them much I cannot complain too much. 

Color variety does pretty well, but you are likely to need to supplement your project with another brand if you are getting too specific.

Felting:
If you don't felt, feel free to skip over. I don't usually use this yarn for felting as it is a touch more expensive but let's see how it shapes up. For felting I use a pet brush and just shred the yarn back to fiber. (because I am cheap and fiber on it's own is way over priced. And because attacking yarn with a cat brush is very therapeutic).
So I went to my desk and pulled up some scraps I have laying around in Hot Pink, Daffodil, and Iced Aqua. It brushes out ok, the fibers want to stay together and it's a bit streaky. I might do better if I carded it with another brush, but there are other yarns that brush out much cleaner so the time would not be worth it.

camera does not like taking pictures of fuzzy things!

As for felting...ugh. It's light and fluffy nature make it pretty bad. I had to use a lot of fiber for it to not push halfway through the project underneath. I gave up on trying to make any kind of shape after the blue because straight edges are hard to make when you try and get precise it pushes to far into the project again or you will have to use a ton of fiber and get a very stiff and tight project.

For felting, stick to stiffer yarns.

Price:
The big decider for a lot of us. I really want to use the softer yarns for my work, but is the price worth it? Well let us see how Red Heart: With Love checks out financially.
A mean average of online and retail prices (not including sales or shipping) comes out to around $4.88 for the larger skein which is 7 oz./198g and 370 yrds/338 meters.
which comes out to $0.69 an ounce or $0.013 per yard
These number will mean more once we have more to compare them to in the following months. But in comparison to the red heart super saver at around $3.00 a skein at only 6 yards less (which is weirdly arbitrary) There are definitely cheaper yarns out there. I will be referencing back to this review when I look at similar sizes in the future and hopefully you can make a better decision for your self then.
For now I find the price to be worth it, especially if I can find it on sale, but it is on the high end of my budget. If they continue switching to their smaller skeins and the prices does not scale I might be looking for an alternative.

So if you liked what I've had to say and want to give it a try, in my area at least, you can find it at:
Joanns and Walmart. Sadly Michaels, Craft Warehouse and even Fred Meyers do not carry it. As I prefer not to support Walmart Joanns or online are my preference.
Amazon has it for a decent price though it has to be added on to your order.
The Knitting Warehouse has it at a below average price though I am not familiar with them enough to fully endorse the site.
and of course you can buy it on Red Heart's website but it is overpriced
I'm sure you know of other great places to find it, please feel free to share in the comments.

I want to end off showing you some of the projects I have worked on with this yarn. I have been moving towards using it more and not been dissapointed. My only issue has been the shade difference between super savers aqua and With Love's iced aqua that meant I had to use the cheeper yarn on my glaceon plushie (the blue one).

Iced Aqua, Peacock, and Super Saver Aqua

Plum Jam

Bubblegum, Daffodile, Hot Pink, and Violeta

Hot Pink and Black

So I hope you liked the first review. Please let me know in the comments what you think about the yarn, this review, a yarn you would like to see reviewed in the future, or anything else you want to say and join me next time for Project Update Thursday or on Monday for something less self indulgent.