Do you ever have a time where you haven’t been your best self? And do you ever carry guilt about that time for years afterwards?
I guess the answer is yes for a lot of people – it certainly is for me. Buying this yarn was one of those times.
I ordered 500g of tape yarn from Yarn on Cone – that’s a link to their site. They say that they dispatch most orders in one or two days, and when I hadn’t had a dispatch notification after four or five days, I emailed to ask about my order. And when I didn’t hear back after another two days, I got a mix of impatient and concerned that I’d let myself be scammed, and raised a concern with PayPal.
The supplier got in touch then to tell me my order was on the way – and that reporting a small business to PayPal could be harmful to them, and perhaps I could have been more patient? It was a civil email. It did not contain an apology.
I replied civilly. I did not apologise. And nearly 18 months later, I still feel squirmy inside when I think of it. I really was being impatient. So to help me absolve myself, if you’re in the UK you may want to consider ordering from Yarn on Cone. Their prices are extremely good, there’s a wide variety, and shipping is free.
Now that I’ve unburdened myself, let’s have a look at the yarn. If you’re familiar with tape yarn, or chainette, there won’t be any revelations here – but it was all new to me.
This particular yarn is 100% acrylic and comes in a 500g cone. The listing says this gives 1500 metres but I feel like it’s much more than that? I’m using it to make a project that expects to use up 1300 metres and even though I’m a good chunk into the knit, I’ve hardly made a dent in the cone.
It has a crisp feel to it, no bounce or stretch to speak of. I’m working in garter and realised a bit too late that it needs gently stretched out before measuring – it doesn’t spring back like other yarns do. It’s also very flat which you can kind of see from the photos.
With regard to the yarn splitting, it seemed like all I had to do was catch it a tiny bit with the tip of my needle, and a big old loop of thread would appear, seemingly much longer than physics would dictate.
I pulled out a loop to demonstrate, as shown above, then I tried to pull apart the plies of the yarn to investigate further, only to find that it isn’t plied at all. In fact, once you find an end and pull on it…
… it unravels, just like knitting! What kind of madness is this?! Look at it go!
I’ll be blogging about the project in more detail so you can see how it works up, but I’m really enjoying it so far. Not as infuriating as cotton (I’m no fan of cotton), not cuddly soft but not squeaky either, like some inexpensive acrylics are, and not hard on my hands. I think it’ll drape nicely, especially after a wash – but I’m getting ahead of myself.
As long as I don’t inadvertently manage to pull on a loose end, I’ll have a top to show you in the next couple of weeks!
I’ve added this post to the Unraveled Wednesday linkup, with thanks to Kat for.
The Crafty Yarnster 