Knitting Rules! Read Online Free PDF

my experience, the miracle of these resealable plastic wonders is multifold.
    â€¢ They keep yarn dust-free. I refuse to discuss what it means that there are so many of us holding yarn for long enough that we need to contemplate layers of dust; I simply thank you.
    â€¢ They keep yarn from unraveling into a tangle that complicates the relationship between knitters and yarn.
    â€¢ They deter the scourge of the planet, the bane of our existence, the very heart of darkness … moths.
    â€¢ They allow us to get more yarn in a closet, as when they’re tightly packed, these plastic pouches make good, if slippery, bricks with which to build yarn walls.
    I know you’re probably unaware that this is a gift you have given us knitters, and I realize this use may be a surprise to you, in that you really seem to believe (if your advertising is any indication) that people are buying them to store food. Take it from me and the other 49,999,999 knitters in North America. Nobody has that much food. It’s knitters.
    Thankfully
,
Stephanie
    (
Who would appreciate it if you would make a Ziploc bag big enough to hold a sweater’s worth of wool, and solve the problem of the knitting needles poking holes in the plastic.
)
    Naturally, because I am me, all attempts to organize my life or have a labeled stash and keep things in an orderly fashion are doomed to result in chaos and confusion, basically the opposite effect of what I was aiming for. In fact, instead of being a knitter who has this stash of power that makes sense and is accessible and inspiring, it turns out that I’m actually a knitter who inexplicably removes the ball bands from yarn and then jams the skeins into an enormous stash of other yarn that is remarkably similar, none of which I remember buying.
    It’s worth noting that every single knitter who has ever wondered about the fiber content, yardage, or weight of a bandless ball thought, at the time that he put the ball into the stash, that he would remember what it was when he came across it again. Trust me. You won’t.
    In my defense (and clearly, I need defending, since I can’t count the number of times I’ve found mystery yarn in the stash, with the label long abandoned or lost), I’m also a big thrift-store and sale-bin yarn buyer, and while that’s frugal and admirable, it also breeds any number of bandless balls. I’m also a spinner with a lot of spinning friends, and gracious gifts of hand-spun don’t come with labels.
    There’s stuff I need to know about my mystery yarn before I can knit it, and some simple yarn interrogation can tell a lot. Using a system of tests, measures, and cleverness, you can usually figure out pretty much what you have, even if you’ve lost the ball band.
    Things can get a little odd for a yarn detective, so you might want to do some of your sleuthing while you’re alone. Many valid yarn investigation methods might lead your nearest and dearest to believe you’re a couple of skeins short of a sweater (if you know what I mean).
THE BURN TEST

    There are three things you need to know about your suspect: what it’s made of, what weight it is, and (heaven help you) how much there is. The most reliable way of figuring out what your yarn is made of is
the burn test.
This highly scientific way to torch your stash can tell you a lot about what you’ve got.
Warning:
I feel bad even mentioning this, because I know you’re really smart, but I feel compelled to mention the obvious hazards of executing the burn test. First of all, have some water nearby. You never know what will burn, or how well. Second, conduct the burn test over a metal sink, not plastic. I’m not apologizing for what will happen if you drop a flaming piece of cotton into a meltable sink. Finally, I (as a woman who has set fire to far bigger chunks of the stash than she planned) suggest you burn small pieces of yarn and hold the pieces with tweezers