Low-End Yarn: in which I apologize to Red Heart Super Saver

Now, I don’t generally knit with what you’d exactly call high-end yarn (Wool of the Andes, yo!) but I do usually knit with wool. I made myself a half-circle shawl recently and have been enjoying wearing it. I made it out of (cue ominous music) Red Heart Super Saver, an acrylic yarn that is really about as low-end as you can get. This is the stuff you use to make enormous afghans out of because otherwise you’d never be able to afford to make it. I have two such on my bed – one made by me some dozen years ago and is basically a four-foot granny square. The other was one my grandmother crocheted out of what I believe is a shell stitch. So, I don’t totally eschew RHSS, but it’s not something I often make garments out of. I want my sweaters to be wool, darn it. The Half Circle Shawl was an exception I made out of a combination of impatience (I was in Wal-mart when the urge to make it hit me) and self-discipline (I hit my yarn budget for the quarter already, and everything in my stash was committed to other projects). I just wanted a nice thick shawl to wear around the house.

While doing A Thing for Christmas Gifts in the kitchen, I had something of a Messy Disaster involving a dark liquid. I had been wearing my shawl ’cause it’s cold in the house and I’m too cheap to heat it much. The Messy Disaster got all over the kitchen – floor, countertops… me…

Which meant I had to wash the shawl. I threw it in the washing machine, washed it with a few other things, tossed it in the dryer and waited as impatiently as any toddler waiting for Blankie for it to come out of the dryer.

Y’all? This came out of the dryer as nice and soft as you could want. The drape has been improved and it’s completely cuddly.

So, while I wouldn’t really recommend it for a nice sweater, I’m gonna say I don’t think this yarn deserves as bad a beyond the pale reputation as all THAT.