It's a giant cone of very, very thin yarn that I got off eBay. I saw the colours, and some random numbers which would have told me that it was thinner than sewing thread, had I bothered to find out what they meant. Needless to say, I ignored the numbers, and bid for the yarn.
(Apparently everyone else must have known what the numbers meant, cos I won it and got it quite cheap)
On the cone, the colours are quite nice. The photo on eBay was obviously taken in very bright light which made it look much more autumn-y. So even if you ignore the tiny, thin threadlike yarn that looks loose on 2.25mm needles, it still had something going for it, didn't it?
No. It did not. I tried knitting up a swatch of the yarn (on 2.25mm needles, of course), and aside from the fabric being all loose and holey, the colours looked awful. Seriously, seriously bad. The brown and salmon-pink pooled and mixed together with the white to make it all look . . . dirty. It wasn't dirty, but the colours together just looked like sludge. So, disheartened, I put it on the shelf in the spare room.
It's stayed there for a couple of years now, being studiously ignored by myself, and I swear even the other yarn in the stash gives it a wide berth! Yesterday, I got this fantastic idea that I could cast on double the amount of stitches I would need for a scarf, and knit it in a tube. This would increase the thickness of the terribly thin fabric, and it would look fab, all drapey and wonderful (I'd forgotten about the hellacious colour mixing).
Today, I cast it on. I would have needed 140 sts for a relatively skinny scarf! But I persevered and knit a couple of rows. The stitches caught on the end of the cable as I knit magic loop, and I had to tug at it to get it past. And even though it didn't actually squeak, this was some seriously bad acrylic. It felt . . . slimy, even though it wasn't actually dirty. Shudder. I am by no means a fibre snob, not at all, I love to knit with acrylic and in fact that's mainly what I do knit with. You can get some really wonderful acrylics, I think. This however, was not one of them.
Anyway, have you noticed the past tense all through this post? Yup, I gave up. The scarf has been ripped (actually I couldn't even bring myself to do that, I just broke the yarn and threw the tiny amount of knitting I'd done into the bin). And the yarn, well, it is no longer considered part of my stash. Ordinarily I would put it in the charity shop with no further thoughts, but this yarn is so bad. I'm half tempted to throw it straight in the bin. However, I don't think my Scottish frugality will let me do that, so I guess it'll be going off to the charity shop.
Maybe somebody out there will actually like the yarn. Maybe somebody will be able to find a use for it. Personally, I doubt it, and kind of hope that no-one else gets suckered into buying it, but I guess it's possible, and as long as there's that hope I feel too guilty to just plain chuck it.
Actually, it's kind of a release. In my head, it's now gone, even though it's just in the hallway waiting to vacate the premises. I'm not one for stash purges (too hoard-y), but this one feels goooooooood!!! Now to cast something on, in some nice yarn!!
6 comments:
I'm so glad you got rid of it! I had some yarn like that in my stash from my early years of knitting and it all had to go. I gave most of it to charity but some of it was *so* bad I just threw it away. I hope your next cast on project goes very smoothly to make up for this last one! :)
I've done the same; I think it's a rite of passage as a knitter that you have to buy at least one dreadful yarn from eBay because it's a bargain. :-D
If the only problem had been the colours, I would have suggested to over-dye it (although I don't know how to dye acrylic), but it sounds like it's an all-round lose.
Good riddance!
Give it away. Just do it! Somebody may love it--I mean, it's possible, right? I've bought horrible yarn on eBay and it was sweet release when I gave it to Goodwill and forgot about it.
I've done that with yarn like that too! It's like a big weight off your shoulders isn't it. Sometimes these things are just un-rescuable!
Just checking out the Twist Collective... (yes, I'm behind)!
xx
Sometimes you've just got to cut your losses and let it go. Give it to the charity shop. Someone else will love it, and if not, the shop staff can always use it... as...um...very thin string?
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