Novelty Yarns

On my last two visits to wool shops I've been amazed by women drooling over some of the novelty yarns on sale and sharing with all and sundry how many scarves of each they had already knit. Handknitting is strange in the way that it periodically becomes a craze. Usually this spawns a crop of garter stitch items in simple shapes. Novice knitters manage these, but it doesn't mean that they will move on to the long haul of the actual craft. Novelty yarns almost guarantee this, because elaborate stich patterns are lost on them, colour and texture being everything.

Personally, I find there's no pleasure in these yarns because the texture prevents the stitches running easily on the needle to create a rhythmic flow.