The 30 Day Knitting Challenge: Day 14

Day 14: What’s the worst yarn/fiber that you’ve worked with and why?

Hoo boy, that’s a tough one to answer. I’m pretty sure there are plenty of awful yarn experiences I’ve had that I’ve blocked out of my memory. For what it’s worth, even decent yarn experiences apparently slip my memory: My mom told me on one of her recent visits that I knit her a hat while we were at a knitting retreat years ago. Once she said it, it sounded vaguely familiar, but I essentially have no memory of it. I wonder how many other Alex Originals are floating around out there that I’ve completely forgotten!

Right, worst yarn ever. You probably know by now that you’re not going to get just one answer. Let’s start with a recent experience:

This is some random grey acrylic that was lurking in my stash. I have no idea where it came from, but it most likely was in a batch of yarn from Goodwill or the like. Now, I don’t hate acrylic yarn. I have some yarn elitism, to be sure, but there’s something to be said for having the right yarn for the job, and sometimes that’s acrylic. There are plenty of non-scratchy acrylics out there and I use them when appropriate:

But this particular grey acrylic was just nasty. Part of the problem was that I sort of just assumed it was worsted/aran weight, so I used it as such when making a Car Blanket for my fil. The other three yarns I used were all Caron Simply Soft. Throughout most of the project, I just knew that I hated working with it: It hurt my hands, it was stiff and scratchy, and the fabric it created was unpleasant. I forged ahead, though. It wasn’t until I was almost done with the blanket that I realized that I was knitting it at too tight of a gauge and that it was probably closer to bulky weight. I don’t think knitting it on larger needles would have sparked a love affair with it, but it might have been a little less intolerable than it was. In any case, the blanket turned out well and no one but me seemed to think the grey panels were sub par.

Another unsatisfactory yarn experience involved Berroco Linet:

I have twelve skeins of this stuff. Twelve. 1320 yards. It came from the Goodwill windfall. It’s cool enough yarn, but I just tried to use it for the wrong project. Mind you, I have no idea what the right project would be, but this definitely wasn’t it. I started to make a Lacy Loo with it, but it just was not working:

The chainette construction of the yarn gives it a sort of angular quality, which made it odd to work with. It wasn’t physically unpleasant like the grey acrylic, it was just not satisfying. I ended up making the Lacy Loo out of a purple merino (Jil Eaton Minnow Merino) instead:

Last up is this sort of greenish-brown acrylic boucle stuff:

It even kind of looks like a turd, doesn’t it? I lost the ball band for it a long time ago and have no memory of what it is. I tried starting something with it years ago, but it just pulls in that weird boucle way. It also has a very thin core of just a thread or two surrounded by a lot of fuzz so it was very hard to work with. I find that I tend to not care for most boucle yarns in general. I haven’t worked with a really nice one yet, though, so they may actually be lovely and I just don’t know it yet!

What’s the worst yarn you’ve worked with?

The 30 Day Knitting Challenge is the creation of Meggiewes who blogs at Knitting in Wonderland.