Thursday, November 22, 2007

That Noro Stuff

So, are the manufacturers of Noro the smartest marketers ever, or what?

Let's examine the facts:

(1) The colorways are fabulous. If you can walk past a Kureyon or Silk Garden display without stopping to touch and fantasize, you should probably just pull the lid down on the casket and go back to sleep. However ...

(2) The colorways on the original skein don't give you any idea of the finished product. Still beautiful, but don't even bother to think you know what your object will look like. It's all a crapshoot! The yarn in the photo above* looked as though it would be much lighter than it is, for instance.

(3) The yarn is unplied and this probably saves money in the manufacturing process. If only ...

(4) The yarn costs a fortune, especially because ...

(5) The long colorways mean that you get less pooling but ...

(6) When you get to the end of the skein you have to (a) resign yourself to starting with a totally new, unrelated, color or (b) dig into the other 7 skeins you bought for the project until you find one with the color you want sort of near the beginning of the skein. Assuming the factory balled everything up in the same direction, which they probably didn't. The result is ...

(7) You will end up with 26 small balls of different colorways, none of which fit into your knitting at all. Then you'll go out and buy 3 more, this time hoping for a little synchronicity (or just good luck!) You'd better like fraternal with Noro, otherwise, your 8-skein project will require 13. (Voice of experience speaking here. 'Nuff said.)

(8) The unplied texture has a rustic look. But ...

(9) Knitting with Noro is like knitting with tree bark. In fact, there may be actual tree bark involved--I have seen several types of vegetation that could be anything from hay to bonsai tree cuttings. It will literally scrape the skin off your hands. I just took a piece of wood out of my knitting that I could have used in the fireplace to heat the house.

(10) The yarn has a gorgeous thick-thin-thicker-threadlike texture that makes it texturally very interesting. Unfortunately ...

(11) You can't use it to sew your project's seams because you might as well used barbed wire (or, as we say in the south, "bob wahr").

(12) It felts really well except ...

(13) When you're trying to spit-splice yarn together because there are 13.6 knots in the average skein of Noro yarn. Spit-splicing becomes a lost art with Noro.

Then, when you're done ...



Love that Noro!


*Iro #57 (purchased from Main Street Yarns)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, that's gorgeous! Photos like that make me want to reconsider. I knit one skein of Noro once. If only, if only they cared about the feel of the yarn as well as the colorways. And then I see something like this, and go, yeah, buttttt... for that, I'd knit Noro, faults and all. Gorgeous.

Anonymous said...

That bag is gorgeous!!! Love Noro, too. All is well in the end. ;-)

Knit Witch said...

Love it!!! Your post reminded me of my husband over the weekend. He was working with some beautiful black clay on the wheel. He came in with raw and bleeding hands because the "extracurricular matter" in the clay that made it so beautiful was tearing his hands apart!!!