Is There Any Good Yarn Out There?

By good yarn I am not talking about wonderful Alpaca or cottons or wool, I am talking about good acrylic. Oh yes, I can hear it now, acrylic...yuk.. the stepchild of yarns. Well sometimes you need a good acrylic. Acrylic is good and sturdy for fast growing kids, hats and scarves for deployed soldiers, hats knit for needy children who would not have a hat otherwise. Arylic is suggested for many charity projects because it can be treated roughly and still comes out ok. Sometimes we may not be financially in the postition to fork out $75 for some really nice yarn we like. I am also not going to make something out of expensive yarn for a 4yr old who gets their afghan caught in their bike spokes. This has actually happened in my family. Fortunately we were able to repair the beloved blankie. I have had several projects for fall that I have needed to use acrylic yarn. It seems that crappy yarn spans the spectrum of companies. I got some Red Heart, not my favorite but the colors worked. There is a previous post on trying to "soften" this yarn. Not too far into the pattern I found the yarn had broken at the factory and had been tied together. Now we all have to tie yarn once in a while but usually where we want not just out of the blue. I got some With Love Red Heart Yarn and some Caron Simply Soft. Same issue. You get knitting or crocheting along and bam right in the middle there is that tied together yarn. Aggravating. Today was what sent me over the edge. I had purchased some Loops and Threads Fabulous Yarn from Michaels. 

 

Cool looking yarn. You simply knit the edge of the yarn and it gathers up. They had a scarf on display but I got to thinking that it would make a cool garland for the Christmas tree.

 

 

I used size 7 needles and cast on three stitches. I am merrily knitting along when I found the first tie. What? Dang ok I am not too far I will just start over. That is the chain at the bottom of the picture. So I recast on and am merrily knitting along thinking this is cool yarn but not something I would use a lot and bam, a second tie-together. Are you seriously kidding me!! Now I am mad. See the second chain. All I wanted was to knit this yarn up and have a cute little garland. I did not want to spend half the time having to "repair" the yarn. Obviously the people who process yarn are not knitters or they might have a solution to "their" problem. Oh, hey I have a solution already. Any skeins that break could be sold as smaller skeins or hey they could be marked as broken skeins and then you would know what you were getting. I mean I do not mind getting them if I know what I am getting and can work around my pattern. Ok, rant is over. It is frustrating though to deal with this problem. I am thinking I will just cast on again and then see how far to the next broken area. Eventually I will have to tie it all together, but, seriously...isn't there a solution somewhere?