After years of knitting, though, and my decade-and-a-half-long love of all things sheep-related, I came to the conclusion that wool was the One True Fiber. I’m not sensitive to it (as I am to mohair, alpaca, and most other animal fibers), it’s often inexpensive, it can be used for a variety of projects, and it has a lot of lovely stretch to it. Acrylic was something I’d use for the occasional crochet project, but nothing else.

Sometimes, though, you want to knit a project for a friend who’s sensitive to wool. What to do then? You can saddle them with crappy acrylic… or you can go with cotton, which can be nice, but has no memory and tends to stretch…

Or you can give acrylic another shot, and surprise yourself by finding an acrylic (blend) that’s actually nice.

Fantasy by Dark Horse Yarns is a 50% nylon/50% acrylic blend that’s by far the nicest acrylic I’ve ever worked with. Put it in the hands of a fellow knitter who eschews acrylic and they, too, will say it’s the nicest acrylic they’ve ever had their hands on. It’s got stretch to it — knitting with it doesn’t feel like knitting with plastic at all. It’s soft like a microfiber, but it doesn’t split like some microspun yarns do. It is, all in all, a really lovely yarn to work with.

It’s not cheap. In fact, it’s more expensive than some kinds of wool I work with. But given the choice between a soft, cuddly, pleasant-to-work-with yarn that’ll be warm and cuddly for a wool-sensitive friend, and a cheap, scratchy acrylic that makes me want to give up on knitting before I finish the project, it’s an easy, easy choice.

So for those of you searching for synthetics for one reason or another, I really do recommend this one. It’s not wool, but it’s the next best thing.

Gossamer Webs is a book that both covers the history of Orenberg lace knitting (a style local to a small town in the former Soviet Union — under the USSR, people who were lace knitters had to turn out 24 shawls a year, and that was often very difficult for a single person, so daughters were often recruited to help) and shows a few pattern options, but this is more a book about how to design your own shawl than how to follow a specific pattern. (The same author, Gamina Khmeleva, also put together a pamphlet called “The Gossamer Webs Design Collection” that does have three gorgeous shawls in it.)

I’d recommend this book to lace lovers, and anyone who’s really interested in the international history of knitting, but if you’re just looking for lace patterns, this probably isn’t the book for you.