It's not often you get to continue a good dream. Once you awaken, it's back to the cold hard slap of reality. Let me take you back to dreaming about the feast of colour and comfort.
Driving south from northern Germany we discuss the meaning of the name Wollmeise. The literal translation is wool bird, as in small bird with a name that means something else, as in a titmouse. After all there is a bird on the Wollmeise's label. Our host explains that Wollmeise sounds suspiciously like a German word that means seriously mentally ill and maybe it's a euphemism for "crazy about wool." Who knows? I seriously doubt, as I've heard on occasion, a meaning related to the words pronounced "wool meister."
My travelling companions, non-knitters, generously permitted me an hour an a half of drool time. I, a knitter, permitted myself a generous 150 euro of freedom. Easily overwhelmed with indecision in such a candy shop I made some quick decisions. I wasn't leaving without a skein of laceweight plus their popular sockweight in a denim blue and a skein of two that were different from my usual suspects. 1.5 hours + 150 euro = 8 skeins of sockweight yarn plus one of laceweight.
The review: what is it about this stuff that overtakes people to the point of spending $38 and up on ebay? I've seen skeins go for $100. That is serious wool craziness. My, as they say, humble opinion:
- The skeins of sockweight contain a generous amount of yarn. Forget those brands that say you can knit a pair of socks from under 350 yards. These have 575. The laceweight has a whopping 1140 yards.
- The sockweight appears to be so tightly wound that you'd think you are knitting with string. The finished product, however, comes out softer than expected.
- Many of the laceweight skeins, all seconds, looked like they had pilling potential. The one I bought didn't, but had a label that said there were "rote punkte," intermittent red dots of dye throughout. Haven't found one but haven't looked closely:
- All their seconds clearly define the flaws on their label. Numbers of knots, red dots etc... I've seen reviews that state yarn bought on e-bay at exorbitant prices contain an unreasonable amount of knots. I view these as the possibility of someone selling seconds to over-trusting buyers.
What's the verdict? If you can get Wollmeise directly from the source, definitely more reasonable than e-bay pricing, despite the unreasonable process of timing scheduled inventory releases and constant screen refreshing to beat others to the goods, go in with a friend, split the shipping and treat yourself to a skein or two. It seems to me that some sort of lottery system would work better than their current procedure.
And what did my travelling companions do while I was otherwise engaged? The town had plenty to keep them occupied:
This one's long enough. I promise to post about my first Wollmeise FO in the near future.
I have knit a shawl from the sock yarn and I agree that the yardage is awesome, the finished product is much softer than expected and the colors are amazing. I haven't knit a pair of socks with any yet and I haven't been able to score any laceweight but I will some day!
Posted by: Carole | January 14, 2012 at 04:24 AM
Truly a dream. Thanks for bringing us along.
Posted by: LoriAngela | January 14, 2012 at 08:31 AM
Maybe some day I'll score some. In the meantime, next time we meet up, you have to promise to let me pet yours! What a great travel souvenir!!
Posted by: Dorothy | January 16, 2012 at 10:17 AM
I'm sooooo confused :(
Posted by: Jane Toumpas | January 27, 2012 at 04:17 PM