No Updates This Week. It Was Hectic with Finals

Newsletter No. 11

April 5, 2005

Site Updates

No updates this week. It was hectic with finals.

Stitch Along Project (week 1 of 6)

Trivet/Flowerpot Surface Protector

Small amount of worsted weight yarn

Small amount of textured yarn for accent

Size H hook

With worsted weight yarn,

Ch 5

Rnd 1: (dc, ch 1) in 5th ch from hook 7x, join w/ sl st in 2nd to last starting ch; 8 ch-sps

Tips and Tricks

No Dye Lot yarn doesn’t always match. I love Red Heart yarn because they make tons of great colors and there’s no dye lot. If you’ve never experienced it, I’m sure you can imagine how frustrating it is to run out of yarn close to the end of a project and the new stuff you just bought doesn’t match. You check the label, and find it’s a different dye lot! Still frustrating, but at least that explains it.

Now imagine how frustrating it would be if this was a no dye lot yarn and still didn’t match. Check the dates. Many no dye lot yarns have batch dates on the label. Obviously if the dates are the same, the yarn should match. If the dates are close, generally the yarn will match well enough, except with some dark colors like dark blue, dark brown, black. If the dates are drastically different, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to use it at all.

It seems like common sense, but I know it never occurred to me until I met someone who had badly mismatched Red Heart Soft Navy and actually called the company to address the issue.

The moral of the story is: If it’s been a while since you bought the yarn you need to match, check the dates or batch code. If it’s been a really long time (a few years) don’t be heartbroken if you simply can’t match your yarn. Dyes age and even if the dye formula is exactly the same, four year old yarn may have faded or darkened for a lot of reasons (humidity, light, storage temperature) and as a result, may not match new yarn.

Question/Comments

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