The Yarn

Everyone loves a good story — or as sailors used to call it, a "yarn". Those of us bred to, or drawn to, the thread and needle arts, love yarn for its own sake. Depending on our skills, aesthetics, and income, our choice in yarn can range from handspun singles of hand-dyed rare fibers to store-brand replacements for Red Heart SuperSaver or Lion Brand Pound of Love.

I'm a thread and yarn worker of mediocre skill and patience, and questionable aesthetics. So what am I doing writing a yarn blog?

It boils down to "thinking out of the box" — or in this case, the net, the mesh, the ribbon, or ruffle — however you choose to describe products such as Red Heart Boutique's Sashay and Ribbons, Premier Yarns' Starbella, Bernat's Twist & Twirl and Ruffelina, and Trendsetter Yarn's Flamenco.

Basically, working at a Michaels in central New Jersey, I've seen too many people walking in wearing The Scarf, and nobody wearing anything else made from this class of novelty yarn. It's not that patterns don't exist — even Michaels' web site has a whole section of projects for "ruffle yarn" — it's that people tend not to see the structure of the product beyond "makes a quick scarf — usually knitted ".

I want you to see more. I want you to see these yarns the way I see them — sometimes as yarns, sometimes as fabrics, sometimes as substrates for other, older needlework techniques. In the end, I want to design with this visual understanding, and I want you to design with it. I want people to see beyond The Scarf, The Skirt, The Handbag, and use only as an edging or accent trim.

And because ruffle yarns are, above all, novelty yarns, their production life is by nature, limited. These yarns may be out of our consciousness if we do not experiment with them swiftly. Publication cycles could easily be longer than the yarn's remaining lifespan, so an electronic format seems my best method.