There was nothing worth watching on tv last night, and for some strange reason when I went to turn off the computer I found myself creating a spreadsheet instead.
You see, a question in among the comments of the Come On Knitpicks petition site had been niggling at me. If we do have plenty of alternatives to Knitpicks yarns here in Australia, what are they?
To work that out, a knitter would have to actually see the yarns. So I went over to the Knitpicks site to see if they had a shade card. They do. They have one for every yarn except those you dye yourself (that’s 26 yarns) and you have to buy them . For US$1.99 each. It would cost you A$65.71 to get samples of KP’s entire range!
When you consider that Bendigo Woollen Mills sends out shade cards for free, Knitpicks are looking a bit ‘cheap’ rather than cheap. From what I recall, I got a free shade card from Nundle as well (but I can’t find any comfirmation of whether they are or not on their site, so don’t quote me on that).
Next I decided to look at prices. It’s easy to get excited by $1.99 yarn on the Knitpicks site, but they’re in US dollars, and for 50 gram balls mostly. So I typed in the specs for Knitpicks yarns into a spreadsheet, including name, composition, weight, number of colours available, machine washable or not, and price. Then I started matching up Bendigo yarns to similar Knitpicks ones (I started with Bendigo because they have the largest range I know of for an independant Aussie yarn manufacturer) and all sorts of interesting information came out.
I found Bendigo yarns are often cheaper than Knitpicks. And they usually come in more colours.
Of course, Bendigo don’t make as wide a range of yarns as Knitpicks. They make the essentials – 100% wool in a range of weights in both machine washable and not, some cotton, some alpaca, and a couple of blends. They also sell the yarn in 200gram balls or skeins, which is economical if you want one or a couple of colours, but not if you wanted to buy lots of small amounts to make a complicated intarsia. Then it’s going to cost you a lot and you’ll have lots of leftovers.
Comparisons by weight:
Laceweight: Knitpicks has five kinds, one plain, three in 8 colours and one in 12. Bendy Classic in 2 or 3ply could replace the plain and 100% merino versions, and is also machine washable, comes in 36 solid colours, and is cheaper.
Fingering/4ply: KP has 11 kinds, four plain for dyeing. Most have only a small range of colours, but the 100% peruvian wool comes in 30 colours (but isn’t machine washable so obviously isn’t meant for socks). The mashine washable yarn comes in 14 colours.
This is where Bendigo yarns fail. You could use their Baby Wool, but it comes in only 8 pathetic pastels. However, you could also use their Colonial 5ply, or better still, their Classic 5ply, which is machine washable. Both come in 36 colours. But if you’re after a bit of nylon for better wearing, forget it. Still, if it’s a choice between machine washable and nylon content, I’ll go for the former first. After all, my socks will never wear out if I don’t wear them because I can’t be bothered handwashing them.
For cotton socks, there’s a Cotton 4ply, which isn’t really elastic enough for socks (I’ve tried it). Unfortunately Bendigo Harmony, which is a wool/cotton/lycra blend, only comes in 8ply.
Bendigo really needs to put out a good basic sock wool.
Sportweight/5ply: KP has 5 kinds, none machine washable except the cotton and the hand painted sock yarn. Bendigo Colonial 5ply could replace the non mw KP, and they have an advantage over KP in having the machine washable version – Classic 5ply. Both are cheaper than KP sportweight wool.
DK/8ply: This category left me stunned. KP has only 5 kinds of DK, and the only one that is machine washable is the cotton! Bendigo Classic, Colonial, Rustic, Harmony, Cotton and Alpaca, plus Nundle 8ply (and Nundle have 30 great colours), make for a much larger range – with a bigger range of colours, than KPs does in this category. While the Bendigo cottons are a little dearer than the KP cotton, the Classic, Colonial, Rustic and Alpaca beat KP prices.
Worsted/10ply: More than half of KP yarns are aran weight to super bulky. I suspect either they’re catering to the kind of knitter who wants a quick, thick knit… or maybe their worsted is actually closer to our 8ply than their DK is. A number of these yarns are novelty yarns, which I won’t bother trying to find a match for. There are 9 KP yarns in the worsted category. For an alternative, Bendigo Colonial comes in a Aran weight, but only in 8 of their 36 colours, but is cheaper than similar KP arans. Also, Nundle’s 8ply is thicker than usual, and could probably do for aran weight knits.
Bulky/12ply: KP has 10 varieties, some novelty. For a good local 12ply 100% wool yarn, Bendigo has Classic and Rustic – and Nundle also does 12ply that’s cheaper than the Bendy!
Super Bulky: KP has three, but they’re a bit ‘novelty’. Nundle Woollen Mills does a chunky 20 ply in many fabulous colours.
Other observations: Knitpicks doesn’t have any mohair yarns. Since I don’t like mohair much, I’m hardly bothered by that. But I do wonder why not. Instead they have a lot of blends containing alpaca.
It is the blends that require more research to find comparable yarns at comparable prices. I expect I’d find lots of similar blends made by Naturally, the New Zealand yarn manufacturer. Price might be a let down there, however. Naturally might make beautiful yarns, but not at bargain prices.
Knitpicks “Bare” yarns, meant for you to dye yourself, come in 100 gram lots, so they’re exceptionally cheap, but in laceweight and DK the difference in price to similiar Bendy yarns is smaller, so compare before you buy.
Overall, I can see that Knitpicks is catering to quite a different market than Bendigo, shown by the variety of sock yarns and bulky yarns, and blends. Bendigo makes an economical and reliable alternative if you want something more standard, like a machine washable 5ply, 8ply, etc. They have been sending me (free!) shade cards for blends – an alpaca/wool and wool/mohair/alpaca/angora blend – but these weren’t on the latest price list so maybe they didn’t generate enough sales.
So, to sum up, if you’re after a good sturdy plain yarn look into Bendigo and Nundle Woollen Mill’s range and prices. Don’t be fooled by prices that seem cheap because they’re in US dollars and for smaller balls and skeins.
If you’re after something fancier – blends and fancy dye jobs – also do your sums. It may be that by the time you have your order posted to a friend in the US or Canada, then add to that cost the price of postage to Australia, it may be cheaper to buy higher priced yarn from shops that mail to Australia.
Shops that don’t treat Australia like a third world country.
Wow – that’s very thorough. I don’t think I’ve seen Bendigo yarn out my way but I might have to look out for it. For me though, KP has always been about the cheap sock yarn.
What a lot of work!
Bendigo laceweight is substandard in terms of softness and twist definition compared with either knitpicks merino laceweight, alpaca cloud (which is gorgeous), zephyr or merino oro/centolavaggio by other makers. Not to mention the multitude of colours these yarns are available in. Machine washable laceweight is extremely detrimental to blocking lace shawls and is not in my opinion considered desirable.
It has always really irked me that the country that INVENTED the merino sheep cannot come to the party in terms of fine merino knitting yarns for knitters in Australia.
But they have no problem exporting it for overseas companies to make it into beautiful yarns to sell back to us at exhorbitant prices.
My problem with knipicks actually has nothing to do with the yarn. It has to do with the lying.
And if Bendigo can’t drag themselves into this century and offer a better standard/range of product that their international competitors then why should I bother protecting them from competition?
Have to agree with Ailsa about the laceweight. I’ve used bendigo’s 2ply for lace knitting, and while the weight might be right, it’s really not suitable for lace knitting. It’s superwash, it doesn’t block well, it’s not soft, even after washing, and the definition after blocking is crap. The only Knitpicks yarns I’m really interested in are the laceweights and the sockyarns. And the pure wool “Palette” is nice too. Australian yarn manufacturers are ignoring those of us who like to knit with finer weight yarns.
girlie jones – Bendigo doesn’t tend to distribute through shops. You have to mail order. They don’t have a website, but if you can email asking for a shade card via order@bendigowoollenmills.com.au they’ll send one to you for free.
knitabulous and donna – I don’t knit laceweight often, so machine washable being undesirable is news to me.
There are definitely problems with Bendigo being a bit backward in regard to its products. When they recently put out a few feathery novelty yarns I just rolled my eyes. About five years too late, that one.
I have to admit, I’d be even happier to sign a petition called “Come on, Bendy!” urging them to start making the yarn knitters want, and make it available through a website.
But while their backwardness frustrates me, it doesn’t offend me like Knitpick’s policy does. I’d rather spend more and buy something else – including other os yarns – than buy KP products.
Hmmm.. I find the card thing weird – I have some kind of inability to actually figure out if I want the yarn from a scrap of it. Sounds to be like they don’t really want to sell their yarns to people who want to buy them.
If Knitpicks changed their policy, would we buy from them, now, after you know, calling them liars and stuff?
I probably would, because I’d want to reward them for it.
What would I buy? Probably undyed sock yarn to play with in the dye pot. Seems impossible to find reasonably priced undyed sock yarn in Australia. Mind you, the longer Knitpicks sock yarn is unavailable, the more time I have to find something local.
Reward them for changing their policy, that is, not lying!
Thanks for that comparison. I am just about to head over to that side of the world, and was considering a Knitpicks order – this post pretty much confirms my original (but not so thoroughly researched) plan of sticking to the lace weight and sock wool.
Perhaps I should ask though, what have Knitpicks lied about? I’m not super up with the knit gossip world, but I don’t remember hearing anything, and a brief Google didn’t seem to help.
Interesting! Bendi does really fall down on their lighter weight yarns, and it would really help if they dragged themselves out of the stone age for a couple of their lines, I must admit. The main reason I like Knitpicks is their much bigger range of blends and the bigger choice in the lace/sock yarn departments.
Bendigo is easily available in the shops, everyone, under the name of Heirloom. It’s more expensive that way, as it comes in 50g balls instead of 200g ones, but for those who want to fondle it is available in many yarn shops. And they do a perfectly good sock yarn this way too – it is called Heirloom Argyle, it is available in most yarn shops, and it wear like iron. Only problem is that it only comes in boring tweedy colours.
Decent laceweight is, I believe, available in Australia if you look hard. I haven’t bought any and I don;t know if it is any good, or how much of it is imported.
I have been gifted some Knitpicks Shimmer and some other Knitpicks laceweight and it is lovely. I don’t know if I would buy from Knitpicks if they shipped out here, the laceweight is probably all that I would buy, the undyed sockwool, if you added the postage, would probably cost as much as buying cream Patonyle and dyeing it (something I have done a few times with great success).
Knitabulous, Australia did not invent the merino, it’s Spanish, though Australia definitely did brred and improve it until it became what it is today. I agree with a considerable frustration about the difficulty of sourcing yarn here, and paying big dollars for Australian wool that appears under Rowan and other labels. (Not that I do, as I can’t afford to).
My last quibble about the whole Knitpicks thing – of course they could post here, everyone else does. Only problem there is that I have had untold trouble with parcels from the US going asrtay – I don;t know at whose end they do, but in recent months I joined up for sixm onths of a sock club from the US and to date have ojnly received three of the six parcels (all paid for and posted), my current Knitted Tote exchange is lost int he post, and I have had a lot of trouble with other things too. No idea if it is at our end or the other. But it is putting me off international post full stop at the moment.
Is it any weirder buying from shade cards than it is over the Internet? Obviously the ideal is to fondle the stuff in person before you buy it, but then we really are limiting ourselves.
Forgot to add – something that really annoys me here is the difficulty in getting nice cottons and cotton blends (I don’t like the Bendigo type cotton – crappy colours, pills like anything) here – to say nothing of the apparrent impossibility of getting anything nice in linen or something similar. I don’t want to wear wool on cool summer nights, I want to wear cotton and linen blends. Given that we foolishly grow cotton in this water starved country, why can’t we get benefit from it, and if not that, why isn’t there more of such stuff imported into Australia? There must be great swathes of Australia where it is almost never cool enough for wool. All the nice blends and nice pure cottons I have found come from overseas and cost a fortune (I bought some the other day). Now I will stop complaining and go back to crocheting a bolero in a cotton/acrylic blend from South Africa.
Hey Sheep Rustler:
Is it any weirder buying from shade cards than it is over the Internet? Obviously the ideal is to fondle the stuff in person before you buy it, but then we really are limiting ourselves.
I guess not, although usually you get more in the picture of the whole skein than you do a tiny little scrap on a card.
bfufmhwthanks for the comparision chart – read the whole thing (and all the comments)……some good information there. thanks
I thought that all the comparative info was interesting, but then I started reading the comments! woo…
Must get a Bendy shade card, and Nundle too if poss.. must fondle more Heirloom…
Hang on – must knit from stash first!!!