Novelty knitting yarns like the eyelash yarns are great for making those big, fuzzy, warm hats, scarves and sweaters that are so great for super cold weather. Once you have mastered the art of knitting with eyelash yarn, you can create some truly amazing hand-crafted items for sale. Eyelash yarns add wonderful texture and colour to a knitted piece and are also lovely and warm.
Eyelash yarn is so called because one of the most common forms has a “strand” or single, solid piece of yarn that you actually use for the knitting with loops of yarn evenly placed all along the center strand. There are other variations as well that can easily be used to emulate fur, metallic strands that give your pieces a certain glow and a metallic sheen as well as many other designs.
When the center strand is knitted into a garment or decoration, the “appendages” or bits hanging off that strand hang out the right side of the knitting to create a layer that resembles fur, hair or just give it a fluffy look depending on which type of eyelash yarn you are using for your knitting project. Thus the finished hand-knitted garment can be a very bold and beautiful fashion statement as well as being great for keeping you warm on those cold days or nights.
There are going to be some issues that you need to be aware of when you are knitting with the eyelash knitting yarn. While knitting needles and crochet needles may be highly beneficial in both arts, you probably do not want to use the crochet needles with the eyelash yarn. The reason is that the hooks on the end of the crochet needle will often get caught up in the strands coming off the center strand of yarn and you will spend as much time untangling your fabric and your needles as you will being able to work with the yarn and getting any knitting work accomplished.
You also probably need to be very comfortable with your personal knitting and your ability to make the proper knots and looping before you begin working with the eyelash knitting yarn. A very frequent problem for people who use this yarn is that the right side of your garment will be obscured by the fuzzy parts hanging out and you have to know that your knitting is okay because it will be very difficult to check your knots once you have made them.
If you can stitch a row or two at a time, you can go back and sort through them but this is very time consuming and can cause even more difficulties with unraveling and loosening your knots. If you have a pretty good idea what you are doing though, it is more of a matter of just getting used to working with the new yarn. Before long, you should not have any problems and the eyelash yarn really does open up a lot of new opportunities for your knitting work.