Casualties of War seems a strange phrase~ are there any who are not affected by War?  Even the so called victors must surely miss the presence of those lost in battle.  At least I think so.  But this is not a political blog so we will get right down to analyzing strategies used in the Sock Yarn Wars.  

 

  It goes without saying that all  were assembled into the same area~ how could the yarns duke it out for stay vs going status without side by side comparisons?  And right away the PTB realized it wasn’t simply a matter of oooooooooh and aaaaaaaaaaah vs hmmmmm .   This led to strategy the first:

 

  Assemble all like yarns.  Now this isn’t just sock vs other yarns or brands or color families but rather a prejudicial value scale.  One hates to admit one values one type of yarn over another.  And of course those that are more valued may decide that they are better than others and lord it over.  No wait.  Since the wars started in large part because self pampering was needed the ‘too good to knit withs’ automatically got corralled together.  The one thing all these too good tos had in common was~ they were hand spun.  Next we corralled together the smaller farm/mill stuff.  Then the hand painted/dyed.  Then the  mass market commercial stuff.  Easy Peasy.  Looking back on this strategy I think the trend was how close the PTB aka the buyer was to the producer.  Not in an I know you personally lets have tea way but rather a ‘oh you blended, carded, dyed and spun this let me appreciate your labor’  vs  ‘produced in a mill by the zillions and zillions of miles and thrown in a huge vat to be dyed and then hanked or balled off on a machine and shipped off to various customers aka yarn companies who glue on a label and now I can buy you anywhere in the world’ way.  I of course have great appreciation for mills.  After all the concept of  shearing, preparing and spinning wool and then knitting it up  so that a garment takes a year <or longer if  you need several fleeces from same sheep darnit> to create is one thing I don’t envy.

 

  Whew! Long run on paragraph that.  So with the goal of reducing the Sock yarn in half it made sense that the PTB just chose half of each corralled pile but this led almost immediately to Strategy the second.  How so?  The smallest pile was, understandably, the hand spun pile.  Six lone hanks of hand spun sock yarn sat there looking lovely.  In the oh 12 or 13 years I have been on the net I have only purchased seven such hanks and have knit with only one.... gratuitous photo of socks made with hand spun yarns for those who do not check my FO album:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking over the sumptuous six  there was no way I could take out a single one.  In fact, with the I Am Worth It mantra firmly at forefront of mind, there was the goal to knit these six right now.  Pampering ahoy!  But once again~ digress.  Strategy the second:

 

  Rob from the wealthy to support the poor.  Big honking huge millspun conglomerate with bazillions and bazillions of identical joyful bundles of color vs. individual spinning away at home wheel... lets just say there were no moral issues in deciding who didn’t need my yarn buck.  PTB immediately robbed the mass produced commercial pile of six socks worth of yarn.

 

  After the first wave we approached the second smallest pile of yarn~ the smaller farm/mill yarn.   I may be mistaken about the production capacity and how close to the sheep these yarns are but I live in delusion and delusions, my friend, make the world go round.  Trust me on this.  Again we met with several problems.  My absolute favorite of all time ‘commercial’ yarn just happens to be Shelridge Farms Heathered sock yarn.  A nice 3 ply wool, nylon blend.  I had five different colors stocked up in this yarn..  One of which I had already knit some socks out of and loved enough to purchase another socks worth.  Witness FURY:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A beautiful deap dark blackened green with other colors thrown in for liveliness.  Should I give up my Fury?  I decided not to btw.  But of the five there was one color which was well a wee bit light and bright for my  rich fall colors mood.  Crocus set aside to go.  Tongue River Farm?  Six  hanks 2 of which would not kill me to part with.  Some lovely Zeileger, totally misspelled I am sure, yarn purchased at MS&W.  Wool/angora and wool/nylon blend sock yarn on cones with each cone enough for a pair or more of socks per saleslady.  I had picked up 2 cones of natural black, gray and cream and the lone really large cone of brown with plans of doing two color stranded designs but haven’t and its been oh eek 4 years?  And I had wound them off the cone so had no idea anymore which color was which blend and yardage of each color so I kept the duplicate colors and set up the 4 pancakes up as a together thing but who remembers what they paid for something.  The tally:  out of 18 I had not too easily justified parting with 7.  Two more stolen from the rich.

 

 

 

  I have the kidlets tonight so they might help me a wee bit tonight.  Knowing them I strongly suspect they will ooh and ah over stuff and make it harder.  Look for last installment Thursday or Friday at the latest.  The first victims are duly listed on the ‘Yarn Sale’ album findable easily enough by scrolling up and clicking on ‘Yarn Sale’ or from  entry page hitting the bright pink triangle thingie that says ‘For Sale’ in it.  

 

yarny days and knitterly evenings, Elka

 

todays opening photo is the wheels of MS&W sockity yarn of unknown yardage but supposedly enough for 4 pairs.  I agree with this assessment BTW with the exception of the natural gray.  That one is iffy IMHO.