Slumberland

I bought one of those Target knitting kits for $3 on clearance, figuring that for $3 it was worth it and it would obviously be a quick and dirty knitting job, something fun and mindless to do while watching tv or whatever. Well, notice something interesting in this picture? (Wider photo showing more context here.) The yarn pictured on the packaging on the left and the yarn given in the kit are not remotely similar. The yarn included is acrylic (of course) but it’s that really freakishly soft fuzzy stuff, and I don’t mind knitting with it just to make this small bag. (Oh yeah — the bag’s going to be a lot smaller than the picture, but I didn’t bother trying to get gauge.) But it’s really dishonest to picture an item that’s completely different from what they are actually selling.

It turns out the reason for the picture being like that is because it’s a recycled pic from their earlier knit kits, a summer beach bag made of worsted weight cotton, in colors like peach and turquoise, very 80s. If you look closely at this packaging, you can see that it’s the original picture, Photoshopped to change the colors. You can see the original pic here on the Crazy Aunt Purl blog — scroll down to the pic of the Summer Tote.

I generally expect more from Target; this was lame. Of course, I didn’t care that much because it’s $3 and I was just going to goof around with it. But they sell these as learning-to-knit kits, and that’s just wrong. (Rumor has it that the learn-to-knit instructions and DVD aren’t very good either, but I haven’t bothered to look at those. Rumor also has it that one of the “Knit It!” kits actually contained a crochet project, without saying so on the package!) If I was learning to knit and I got yarn like this, where you can’t even see your stitches, it would totally mess me up.

I wonder if Target has any more of these planned. Currently they seem to have removed all the knit kits from their shelves. I hope they do more, but with better quality. Of course, that’s probably too much to ask.