The real thing?

When a local yarn store, Knot Just Knits, was going out of business last year I  bought only a few items.  One of them was Mimi Yarn by Lotus, and distributed by Trendsetter, advertised as 100% Mink.

Advertised.

Recently, I pulled out this yarn, wound a ball and decided to knit a shawl with it for a gift.  Part way through I was thinking that I would like another skein to allow me to make the shawl larger.   That’s when I found this:

mimi_recall

Apparently, there never was any Mink in this yarn, just wool, angora, rayon and nylon.  It is very soft, but not mink.  I was wondering how this could be at the given price.   Trendsetter was offering a rebate to your local yarn store (out of business) provided you sent back the original yarn and your receipt.  Who keeps yarn receipts?  So, without that I thought that I would most likely not get a good response from Trendsetter, and since I was already part way through my shawl, I opted to continue, and just kept weighing the yarn to make sure that I was going to have enough to finish.

Haurni is the pattern that I knit up. and luckily, the designer was very clear that when you finish Part A, Part B uses about 50% of the yarn.  Years ago I had knit this shawl, and remembered this part, I just was not certain how close it was going to be.  I was able to add an extra repeat in the shawl to make it a tad bit bigger.

The pattern is fun, well written, and easy to expand.  You can check out my previous version of this shawl HERE. and HERE, I had forgotten that I have made this twice before!!! And I did have enough yarn to finish, not a ton left, but not a scary nail biting finish.

The shawl really comes alive when it is blocked.   I had a specific person in mind for this, I will have to see how I like it when the blocking is finished.

This is a good blog post about the Fake Yarn.  Well, a country that poisons their own babies with tainted formula, our dogs with bad pet food, and substituting plastic for rice!  I am now even more committed to purchasing yarn that was first grown and spun in the US, and second from a reliable Scandinavian or European country.  Or back to spinning my own from fiber of local farmers, the best solution if I have the time.

Careful people, the USDA now allows all of our meat to be sent to China for processing.