Fingering Weight Yarn, How Much Do I Love Thee?

Sabrina Mitts, designed by Cecily Macdonald. Courtesy: Quince & Co.

Knitting is full of surprises, like which yarns you end up falling in love with, which ones go barely touched straight to the church donations bag, and then the scrappy end-of-skein bits you horde, not sure you know what to do with. I fell hard for fingering weight yarn when I made a pair of booties for my mother over a year ago. I found a 1960s pattern on Ravelry, a free download. This would be my back-door entry into sock-making. We wouldn't call it a sock because that would sound hard. Who really needs to know the architecture of turning a heel? It's a bootie, for goodness sake. So I dove in, using two skeins of vintage 1970s Evermatch yarn that my mother gave to me from her church donation bag. Really, it was going to be a quick project. The yarn? It was I needed to get the project done.

Yet I hadn't expected to like this yarn so much. It was easy to work with, even on those pesky double-pointed needles. Easy to undo! Yet they didn't unravel when I wanted them to stay put. Better than a dog! And such great stitch definition. And amazingly, there were no breaks, no dusty spots...surprising considering this yarn was older than a Jimmy Carter for President t-shirt. Old! But I loved the stuff so much that I asked for more later (I had seen an obscene amount of this yarn in my mother's bag)...and learned that it was gone! All of it for socks for preemie babies or something like that. I was heartbroken. But I kept after my mother, and asked her if she ever got more, than I wanted a sweater's worth. Well, some months later, I got my wish. I had to giver her unwanted yarns in return, but I got like 27 skeins of buttery yellow Evermatch yarn. More than I could ever use. So I made a sweater from a vintage pattern. Still more yarn left. Now I'm working on another vintage pattern, a cardigan. Last time I peeked, some more yellow skeins smiled back at me. Will I get tired of Evermatch? Maybe. On second thought, nah.

Alas, my mother doesn't have more Evermatch yarn (called sportweight and sock yarn on the label) in other colors to give...so I've gone questing on eBay, nothing bubbles to the top in my searches yet. Still I've got fingering weight yarn on my mind. A little goes a long way, which is one reason why it was popular during the Depression. Now it seems like the top reason for owning fingering weight yarn now is to make socks. I don't know...socks don't intrigue me much. They fall down.  They're often too thick for my taste. They can look peasanty with sandals. So fingering weight, in my mind, is meant for hats, gloves and glorious sweaters.

Since I don't have access to the Evermatch of my dreams, I've been looking at other varieties. New stuff still in production. Here's what I have my eye on:

• Tern by Quince & Co. (Tern will haves own entry in v1.3 of Yarn U, the iPhone app)
• Boreal by St. Denis (Veronique Avery got me hooked when she visited Loopy Yarns last year. I've yet to buy...but it's tempting me badly.)
• Bijou Spun by Bijou Basin Ranch (Ultra-expensive...I'd just make a hat with one skein of this luxury fiber)
• Shepherd's Wool (the fingering weight variety)

and the grandest import of them all, Excelana, coming all the way from England, and the backs of Exmoor Blueface sheep there. I'm more than three-quarters tempted to pre-order the second volume of A Stitch in Time, just so I can get a skein of Excelana and test it out on my size 2 bamboo needles. But it would be far, far, far cheaper just work up something made stateside (or at least in North America). Heck, why not just go for the KnitPicks fingering weight yarn by the UPS package and call it a day?