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Originally Posted by
SusansSoulShines
Hi Jean Marie, It's simply brand name yarn that is bought out by someone and re-sold with no brand label, it will say on the label only "100% acrylic", or "acrylic mill end" or whatever it is, like cotton, and you have to know the ply by looking at it or comparing it to some you have and know the ply of and maybe recognize the brand of. I've used the method I posted on my blog site a while back about how to wrap the yarn around a ruler and measure the WPI (wraps per inch), which I believe someone has made a quick tutorial video or pic step by step tutorial of how to do, to learn the ply of yarn weights, but I can tell just by looking at it now Or the generic may be made for the brand and then deemed a little less than 100% perfect and thus people won't want to pay full and sometimes expensive prices for it, but it might be 90% perfect so it works for me!
It's no different than the way generic food came about really. I've used generic yarn often and never found anything wrong with it at all, mostly acrylic or cotton, fine, worsted 4 ply or chunky. Some is plain and flat finish and some is coated shiny. It's so low priced that I had to try it and have been very pleased with the quality. You won't find it in stores or online I don't think, you have to have a warehouse /wholesaler /re-seller business who sells it as mill-end, which means like the end of a perfect roll that they feel might have imperfections, but like I said, I've never seen any. Or if you live near a yarn company, which we do have in our area, called Coats and Clark, who've been around forever, they own Red Heart Yarn and other textile labels, and they have places all over this country and the world, they often only have offices but sometimes some yarn processing or packaging plants nearby but I've not heard that they sell yarn there, or even have a store on site.
You'd be surprised who owns what yarn companies, but not as much is actually made in the US on large scale as it is in other countries, but plants like bamboo is grown for yarn production and that plant has amazing properties and is also used to make cotton for medical purposes and it grows super fast and is very earth friendly, or where silkworms are raised and cultivated for expensive silk yarn and this is controversial and not so earth friendly all the time, and many animals are raised for their fleece, and all of this is either just hand woven or machine made into yarn in other countries including being spun, woven and dyed, or left undyed, and comes to the US from other countries, and here they take it from those various states of production to become yarn. In America it becomes a certain brand if it isn't one already and made fo that company in another country, and it sometimes comes from the same source but processed differently, or blended like bamboo and silk, or bamboo and cotton, and is then sold. In the U.S. we have some large manufacturers, but it's actually more small scale farms where they sell their fleece to local individual or small businesses who have spinners, weavers and dye-ers.
The place I can buy 'generic' yarn sometimes has certain types of Lion Brand yarn in the actual LB labels, and while I've never seen any other brand labels they do have yarn I recognize, like Super Saver standard worsted weight 4 ply I've seen before like camo, solids, other variegated, and also misc Red Heart type soft shiny yarns like I bought Thurs to make my summer top. Sorry for so much info, but it's interesting to me! I believe what I'm working with on my 1st top is like RH Unforgettable, a luscious yarn!! I'm really enjoying using it! I'm still waiting to receive my Red Heart pgk that I won 2 wks ago looking forward to using that too! I've inquired about it. Have a nice weekend!