Post: Submitted by - Searchfamilies  Date: 19-Dec-08 12:52

don't know if anyone thinks that yarn shops now days seems to only have certain types of yarn I can remember going in to them & spending ages looking & picking yarns not fancy ones just ones you can use now even in the knitting magazines they don't seem to use what I call normal yarn it all so expensive & made up of mixtures I had not heard of.
Knitting use to be done as a cheap way of doing things for the family now to knit it is so expensive & if you have to buy from the net you can't even spread the cost like you could when going to a shop who would put some by so you could go in each week to get some, most of my knitting has been on acrylic or acrylic with wool & it wears well I still have a cardigan that was knitted over 20 years ago what do you all think of the knitting magazines & yarns that out now, some I agree are very nice but on the whole I can't say I am for it plus some you can only get from the net & how do you really know what it like before you buy.

Post: Submitted by - sallyp  Date: 21-Dec-08 03:30

I thought it was just me! I do subscribe to a knitting magazine, mainly because I like reading about knitting. I've yet to knit any of the patterns up though - precisely because of the reasons you describe. I am always pleased to find a pattern which uses DK, aran or something which I recognise. I know you can substitute yarns, but that is not easy, without faffing around with tension squares, length of yarn etc. Also the fancy yarns are so expensive. I tend to fall back on Country Style or similiar - a step up from basic acrylic without going into debt!

Post: Submitted by - Aroha  Date: 05-Jan-09 11:04

I remember those old shops! My late aunt was a great knitter who came from a big, quite poor family and she learnt to knit when she was about 5 yrs old on 6" nails. She taught me how to knit when I was 17 and we used to go into the local haberdashers shop who also sold lots and lots of wool. We would trawl through patterns, pick one and then the wool which would be put away and paid for as we needed it. This worked really well because you never had the worry of running short of the batch no. you started with. There's nothing quite like seeing the wool and feeling it. Unfortunately these shops have disappeared and the only place I know that comes a little close to this is John Lewis - not altogether convenient to get to. My aunt could knit anything and and was such an unlimited source for telling me what wool substitutes I could use, where I'd gone wrong, explaining patterns - I was amazed to find that Cable Knitting was easier to do than it looked! 25 years later I've picked up my needles and started all over and like you, I dislike all the fancy names because it takes me ages to figure out what weight yarn it is to find a substitute. The fancy yarns are way too expensive and have a limited production. It would be so much easier (especially on website searches) if manufacturers would just add 4 Ply, DK, or Aran, or whatever after the fancy names.