Then there's this. I love to knit. I love to knit for my grandkids, but every once in a while I knit for somebody else. In this case, it's someone my daughter knows, someone whose pregnancy was so wildly unlikely, such an out-and-out miracle, that I just had to commemorate it with one of my famous blankies.
Right. So I go to Michaels and buy eight balls of soft pink yarn (the selfsame yarn that I made Lauren's blankie out of) that says NO DYE LOT on it. A dye lot is a number on each ball band, and it indicates subtle differences in the dye. It's recommended to buy all your yarn with the same dye lot, or you may end up with noticeable colour differences.
But since the yarn said NO DYE LOT on the ball bands, I just grabbed. And I started to knit. Oh my I was enjoying this, an easy pattern, soft silvery-pink yarn. I whizzed away, and the wool felt soft and fat under my fingers, flexible and a bit shiny like silk.
But at a certain point, as the blankie grew and grew, I noticed the end of it seemed to have been bleached. It was faded out, somehow. I knew it couldn't be possible, unless I was letting it drag on the floor or something. Then I spread my blankie out, and: HORRORS!
It was two different colours! I mean, radically different, a silvery baby-pink and a much brighter, almost carnation pink. I freaked. I jumped up and down. I checked all the ball bands on all the balls I had bought, and they all said NO DYE LOT, but the numbers that appeared on them (in spite of their being no dye lots) were all different. Not consistent.
I was horrified, and ripped the entire thing out, about 30" of blankie. I couldn't do anything with the yarn but save it, great vast useless balls of it. I returned the rest of the yarn to Michaels, who had none of that colour left, then found the same yarn, exactly the same according to the ball band, at Zellers. So I bought eight balls.
Then started working. Yoops! It was the darker, carnation pink, all of it. At least they looked like they were all the same. But the the thickness, the weight of it was totally different. That soft, fat texture was completely gone. Though it was still labelled "worsted weight", the wool felt like what we call "sport yarn", a thinner, usually inferior yarn with a lot of knots, fuzzballs and other imperfections in it.
I hate this. Hate it hate it hate it. I hate it because I've had similar things happen over and over and over again, and it is never addressed or even acknowledged. I've seen wild differences between balls of yarn, as in Paton's Astra, where your yarn can vary from thin sport yarn to thick stuff you'd make into a fisherman sweater. Same information on the label, though. Exactly.
This wild lack of quality control has lead me to contact manufacturers at least three times. Hasn't anyone else noticed that these products do not match, that they are not the same at all, that they have been radically changed with no notice? That they are all being shoved into the same bin in the stores because they say NO DYE LOT, and sold to unwitting customers who end up with projects in six different colours, not to mention textures that don't even match?
After each complaint, the "response" was the same. Zilch. No one bothers to answer me, because I guess we're just not spozed-ta notice, or if we do, to complain.
But I notice. I can't do anything about this. This is all I have, so I keep knitting, missing that sensuous soft, fat, pliable feel between my fingers, to be substituted with something more like hard, tightly-twisted string.
I guess it'll look OK, but it won't be baby-soft and cuddly. But I am NOTNOTNOT going back to that bloody store again. Just not. I hate being told by Michaels, "oh, it has no dye lot so there shouldn't be a problem matching them", or, "it's the same product, see, look at the label, it hasn't been changed at all."
I guess I have a personality which is not very flexible or forgiving. I just hate it when things not only go wrong, but STAY WRONG. I am solution-oriented, which means I will be miserable most of the time in this world which is so full of loose ends and flimsy commitments. I hate situations where people make weak attempts, if any, to fulfill promises made. We pay goddamn enough for things without slipshod quality control and mean tricks played on consumers by dishonest manufacturers only interested in downgrading the quality of their products to save them money.
This product is called BERNAT SATIN. Do NOT buy it. It's shit. It used to be lovely, and I loved it and used it for many projects. But when a yarn suddenly changes to half its former thickness and softness, and the colour is so inconsistent it's impossible to match, you don't want to waste any more money on it. This is an important project, probably the most important I will ever produce. And you guys have pretty much fucked it up. Thanks a lot, and I hope your company sinks without a trace.
And let's not get into the rain, the rain, the rain. It thuds down on my roof in golf-ball-sized blobs. Tomorrow is my little granddaughter Lauren's fourth birthday, and the kids wanted to frolic around in the back yard, but now they can't go outside at all unless they want to be up to their knees in bloody mud.
(Why Tony Perkins? Because "age did not wither, nor custom stale/His exquisite androgyny". And, like God, he was never slipshod in his work. This song, so bittersweet it makes me weep, is from his one musical, Greenwillow, in which he was much more brilliant than anyone seemed to know at the time.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u7ynH1Jw_0
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