A good yarn is hard to find! (Not all cobweb weight Shetlands are made equal)

I previously posted that I bought additional skeins of cobweb weight Shetland yarn from Lacis, as a back-up. Better safe than sorry and all that. Well, I opened one up to wind it and lo-and-behold! I find it is not really the same. The quality is not as good as the one from the 1980's. To be sure, I checked the Heirloom Knitting group at Yahoo. There is discussion there along the same vein. Sigh. It sucks to get old and have things you liked go the way of the dinosaurs! I shall use this yarn later for something else. It will not be used in The Wedding Ring Shawl however. For that, I will use my "old stash" yarn. I will also go back to the Sharon Miller Heirloom Knitting site and give a good hard look at her new lovely yarns. I trust her judgment and further purchases of yarn for this type of Heirloom Knitting will likely come from her if it's a gossamer weight type of project!

I heard back from the UK via e-mail about the Cashmere. Because it was the last of it in that color/weight, and because it is a "mill end" it is in several small cones, not one large one. The mill let me decide if I still wanted it or not as some persons might prefer not to have to make a join. I really don't mind so I said to send it. They were nice enough to throw in an extra cone of the other lace-weight yarn I purchased in lilac. When I get them, I will post them! For those who are knitting the patterns by Sharon Miller, Alice (see previous post) suggested I check out the Yahoo group for Heirloom Knitting (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/heirloomknitting/) . I did join and I must say that the people there are a wealth of information and inspiration. Sharon Miller also takes her valuable time to answer questions for that group. I think I will mostly lurk unless I have something to contribute that is informational. I did comment to them that I had compared the old Shetland from Lacis to the New and found that they were not the same. The nice thing is, that there is alot more to choose from these days than when I first was interested in Shetland lace knitting. At that time the Lacis yarn and one from Jamison Smith (still available but not as fine) were about all there really was. So I guess it's not all bad, this getting old stuff.

Be back when I finish the swatch!