Mystery Bag Adventure

Getting a surprise bag for the holidays has evidently infected me with mystery yarn fever; I wanted to buy more so I can give myself a nice surprise (because I've earned more than one for all the work I've been doing for the day job and at home. Truly.) The price of mystery yarn bags and boxes can be very steep, however, and since you don't know what you're going to get that can end up costing you a lot for yarn you may not like or be able to use.

When I got in some unexpected royalties I decided to sample some online mystery yarns I've been curious about, but set a limit of $20.00 per purchase so I wouldn't overspend. I also wanted to get acrylic because that is the yarn I most often use.

It was actually tough to find any at the price, but some digging through my search results finally turned up three.

Hobbii has a $19.00 bag of mystery acrylic yarn that is 500 grams/17.6 oz., which should be about four to six skeins. I've seen Elise Rose review the wool version in her video about mystery yarn bags here, and I liked what I saw her receive. Hobbii also has a reputation for nice yarns, and I've never tried them, so this was my first buy.

StringsTooStitches on Etsy offers a one-pound (16 oz.) mystery bag of yarn for $15.00. I have very good luck getting nice yarn from Etsy sellers (my Christmas bag was an example.) I also liked what I saw in the seller's photos, and while I can't really hope for another Caron O'Go I thought the price was fair, so I invested.

The cheapest mystery bag I found was at Herrschners, which offers a 14 oz. Premier acrylic yarn mystery bag for the very low price of $6.99. Since that's the cheapest price I've seen on any mystery yarn bag I bought two.

When my bags arrive I'll post pics of what I receive, what I like, what I don't like, and most importantly if I thought it was worth the price.

Comments

On the Beach

Last week my guy and I went to walk Daytona Beach, which was mostly (and eerily) deserted. This is what our beaches used to look like when I was a kid. It was a beautiful day, cold and breezy but calm. It feels like 2026 is getting off to the right start.

Eight Plus Numbers

When I was looking up the retail on the small lot of yarn plus a tapestry kit I got a lot of surprises. This Red Heart Roll with It Sparkle skein in "Diamonds" was actually a cake that sells $10.99 on Yarnspirations. The lot included two Red Heart Super Saver Jumbo skeins, which retail for $8.99 each, and stuck in the center of the buff color I found a 5.5 mm crochet hook. This is a skein of 100% Icelandic wool, which can be really expensive. It's marked with a price tag of $7.00, and I found it selling for $8.00 online. The needlepoint kit is the biggest surprise of all. It makes a pillow, and hails from the UK, where it sells for £45.00 ($60.76 US). Since it's flamingos I definitely have to finish it if I can. Altogether my eight plus lot retails for $125.04; I paid $21.30 total for the lot with the buy-it-now option and one penny shipping. I indeed got a very nice bargain.

Not So Cheerful

Since I finished the January crazy-quilted tote for my calendar project I jumped back on making the Iris throw, working this time with Bernat Giggles in Cheerful Blue. From the start this skein seemed determined to give me trouble, not anything cheerful, as I had to contend with a big knot of yarn I tugged out along with the center pull strand (I didn't take a pic of that.) This yarn is 90% acrylic and 10% nylon, and come in a 3.5 oz. skein. Not sure why they added nylon to the acrylic, perhaps to make it softer. The color is nice, and it's fairly smooth, but it also splits easily and wants to pucker, pop and untwist, especially when you tear out stitches. Naturally I had to tear out two and a half rows to correct two mistakes, which aggravated me because the yarn was untwisting when I went to crochet it again. To add icing to this terrible cake, I ran out of the yarn on the final row. To keep the symmetry with the other sections I had to pull a compatible color fro...

Thrifty Crochet

Search This Blog