Innovation at Red Heart
“No color switchin’. Just keep on stitchin’ with 67% less ends to weave in to finish your next granny square project. This beginner-friendly yarn is perfect for at home or on-the-go projects with 1 ball making up to 14 granny squares.”
With all the big projects and presentations I have in the works for the beginning of the year, I was reminded to do something fun for myself. For me, fun will always be experimentation. And I’ve stumbled upon a beautiful failure.
Keep in mind I don’t use “failure” as a derogatory. Failures are opportunities for learning and improvement. Failures are proof of effort. Failures are to be celebrated.
Red Heart put out a line of yarns called All-in-One Granny Square. Even as I write this, it is already being phased out and every colorway is marked by one-star customer reviews. Still, I went out of my way to get ahold of a skein to try for myself.
The idea behind this yarn is that the color striping in the yarn is perfectly proportioned so that the color shifts happen at each round of a granny square without having to switch skeins.
Based on the reviews, I started by sizing my hook down. On the first round, it turns out I needed to size up. The recommendation on the label is to use an I (5.5mm) hook and it took a J (6.0mm) to get the colors to line up.
Thinking I had figured out the gauge, I went on to the next round. Well, now I did need to size down to an H (5.0mm) to make it line up. And for the next round, I needed to size back up to the I hook to make it work out.
As far as keeping consistent tension, I was unable to do so and also make the colors line up. By the time I adjusted my gauge again and again, I spent more time on one granny square than I would have spent if I’d been weaving in ends. And I certainly wouldn’t call it beginner-friendly, as a beginner likely wouldn’t know what changes to make to get the colors to line up.
I commend the Red Heart team for producing such a risky yarn. Precision color placement is incredibly tricky. I think this is a good example of something that we haven’t yet figured out how to do in a commercially produced yarn. Yet.
Thank you Yarnspirations and Red Heart for continuing to develop yarns for our community. The color handling in this yarn was incredibly innovative. While this yarn wasn’t a success, this is the kind of creative experimentation that leads to true innovation and I hope we see some really interesting yarns that benefit from it having been on the market.
