Let us clarify:
We are not telling you to unravel old yarn and recycle it, procure yarn from your grandmother’s attic and shake out the mothballs, or to frequent vintage yarn stores, although you are certainly free to do any and all of these things.
What we mean is, don’t buy yarn jut because your local yarn shop labels it new. When it comes to yarn, new is not synonymous with quality, especially since many fibers are now produced and packaged very cheaply in China.
Calling a yarn new often just means that it costs more than it should. Buying yarn when it first comes out is like going to the box office to see a movie premiere. You’re going to see it on Netflix or a DVD in a few months, so why pay full retail?
Introductory yarn never has better pattern support than current yarn, nor is it more popular. It’s difficult to read a review on a yarn that no one has ever seen before. Just because a wholesale yarn company is trying to hype a previously unreleased yarn to their retail stores for your mass consumption, should not make that yarn desirable.
What to look for:
You can tell if a yarn is tried and true if the company keeps the line and just keeps adding fresh colors and more patterns. These often are higher quality yarns, and you can get better pricing if you know what to do.
What to do:
Purchase yarn past season. Yarns referred to as new become very reasonable priced during seasonal knitting change overs like Winter into Spring and Summer into Fall.
Look for overstock colors. These discounted shades are almost always first quality and first run yarns. They are likely to be the most popular colors out there. What has happened is that the mill has over ordered them, thinking that they will sell out most quickly. Because minimums run so high, warehouses can get saddled with astronomical levels of popular colors such as charcoals and blues, but sell out of less desirable yellows and oranges. This can work to your advantage.
Buy Mill Ends. Mill Ends are not seconds, they are the end run of yarns usually kept in reserve for a wholesale yarn company until all colors have been produced and such yarns are either run again or discontinued. These yarns can oftentimes be purchased for a fraction of their retail cost and in much larger quantities–on a cone or by the bag for example.
DontBuyNewYarn – 01102012