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Lies Your Yarn Ball Band is Telling You

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ball band liesI absolutely love this post from Gwen Bortner at Two Sides of the Same Stitch about the top five yarn label lies. Go read it, right now, I’ll wait for you.

These are things that I already know after years in the industry but I think a lot of knitters take the ball band as gospel and they need to know that they may never achieve the gauge that that little band calls for (I think I’ve done it once in all the yarn reviews I’ve ever done at About; it was Vanna’s Choice) and they may not even like the fabric that results when using the recommended needle. I had that issue over the weekend when I was swatching for a cardigan and felt like the suggested needle was too big to make the kind of fabric I wanted.

Ball bands mean well, but they lie because of a lack of standards, or because no one is going to take the time to actually measure the yardage of every ball of yarn as its produced. That’s just the way it is. And that’s not to say you should ignore the ball band entirely, just know that it isn’t always as simple as those little words and symbols would have you believe.

Have you run into any of these yarn label lies in your life? I’d love to hear about it.

Comments

  1. I ran into this problem shortly after I started knitting. I bought some Naturally Caron Country for a pattern that required bulky yarn. The label on the yarn matched the gauge my pattern needed and suggested a #10 needle. I started out with the needle suggested – ugh, what a mess! My stitches were so loose you could barely see the design in what I was knitting. Later, I was comforted to see that Ravelry had listed this yarn as more of a dk/worsted weight and a #7 needle is a better choice 🙂 Now, I don’t assume the label is correct.

  2. Woah, I wonder if that was a mistake on the ball band, because there’s no way that stuff is bulky. I can imagine the strange fabric it made…thanks for sharing!

Have you read?

Learn a Flower Bobble Technique to Knit a Fun Shawl

Generally I like knitting patterns where I feel like you can use whatever yarn you have (because my stash is big enough and I want to use it, thanks) and make a successful project. This is one of those times when a special yarn makes the process that much easier. 

The Floral Bouquet Shawl from Xandy Peters uses a specific extended color pooling yarn from Feisty Fibers, which allows you to place the bobble flowers with increasing frequency as you knit the project. 

It starts with a solid color yarn, then the two color yarn is added in, and you make a bobble whenever you encounter the color pops. This would be hard to replicate with other yarn that doesn’t have the extended color pooling built in.

The background of the shawl is ribbed, making the project reversible. 

The shawl uses fingering/sock yarn and comes out to be an asymmetrical triangle that’s 54 inches/137 cm long and 36 inches/ 90 cm deep and 60 inches/150 cm across the top edge. 

Xandy says the pattern is for intermediate to advanced knitters. Knowing how to work traditional bobbles would probably help, but there’s a great video tutorial for how to work the floral bobbles so you can practice on other yarn or even incorporate the bobbles into other projects. 

The bobbles are five-petaled flowers but they also kind of look like starfish to me, which could be fun on a child’s cardigan or other pattern. They’d also be fun on the leg of a sock or around the brim of a hat for extra whimsy. 

The pattern includes photo and video tutorials, and written and charted instructions. It also includes tips on what to look for if you choose to use different yarn for the project, and instructions on how to dye your own yarn to use in the project. 

If you want to give it a try, you can find the pattern on Ravelry. 

[Photo: Xandy Peters]