A Ruffle Yarn Rant

I’ve never been completely keen on ruffle yarn. The only “fun” yarn I’ve ever had my heart skip a beat for was more art yarn that looks more like this:

 

or…..

 

both images are linked to my Pinterest page!

I can never deny the thick’n’thin yarn. Yum!

But I digress.

I’ve watched lots of people go ga-ga over the ruffle yarn since it became popular. I never really got it; maybe it’s because I feel like a bit of a yarn traditionalist and anything that doesn’t look like YARN confuses me a bit. Maybe it’s the fact that the majority of people I see wearing ruffle yarn scarves are twice my age. Who knows.

Over the last two Christmases I have acquired two different balls of ruffle yarn. First from my stepgrandmother, and at the time I thought, “well, at least I like the colours”. But I still never really touched it. Then this past Christmas my aunt also gave me a ball and matching needles and I thought, “well, this might be a sign”. I’ve accidentally left my entire Christmas present from my aunt at Kyle’s house since I got it.

However, about a month ago my mum asked if a friend from work could borrow a set of my needles; she needed a specific size and didn’t have them but didn’t want to buy them. Of course, I lent them hesitantly. Lending my needles is the same to me as lending a book – I only do it with people I trust to extremes and even then I make sure my name is written in big letters inside the front cover and I keep track of how far they are in the book so I can gauge when I can get my book back [I’m a weirdo, I know]. The big surprise came slightly after Christmas when my mum [an essentially non-knitter]confessed to me that she had been the one really borrowing the needles because she had been trying to knit me a scarf, that her friend from work had gotten her the yarn for, but it was taking her longer than she thought because it was, you guessed it, a ruffle scarf.

Now, you might say, “What!? Trouble with ruffle yarn?! But one of the things advertised by ruffle yarn is how easy and quick it is to make a scarf with it!!”

I say, “Not true. Not true at all.”

Mum and I looked it over, she had been adding and subtracting stitches all over the place because she kept losing track of them, she didn’t know whether each individual pre-made stitch was to be knitted in or could she knit in every other one? It even confused me a little bit.

This conversation happened just over a month ago and my mum hasn’t touched the scarf since [so much for me getting a new scarf!] and it has been sitting on our kitchen island ever since. This morning while waiting for the kettle to boil and the toaster to toast, I decided to try it out myself [not going to lie, ruffle yarn or not, the temptation to knit something left laying around was too great] and I found myself feeling like a first time knitter again. I felt slightly ridiculous.

I felt clumsy: I had trouble finding the holes, figuring out whether you were supposed to try to knit EVERY hole or every OTHER hole, handling the yarn felt awkward and it took me forever to finish a row of 8 stitches. I wasn’t very satisfied and it made me want to stomp off, grab a ball of wool and shake it in the ruffle scarf’s face yelling, “THIS IS WHAT REAL YARN LOOKS LIKE!”

So I decided to write a post instead because I’m not that mean to inanimate objects, especially yarn.

I’d love to know anyone else’s experiences with ruffle yarn or advice on how to knit it without frustration. People, how do you get into the ruffle yarn rhythm?