Red Heart nostalgia

Poor Red Heart. It takes such abuse. Whenever anyone thinks of scratchy, grotesque-colored, artificial-fiber-based yarn, they think of Red Heart. Many knitters aren't old enough to remember Red Heart in the way it used to be.

When I first learned to crochet and knit, Red Heart was one of the nicer yarns you could get at the dime store. (Dime stores were the previous incarnation of discount stores, only smaller. Kresge's was a dime store chain where I grew up, and it turned into K-Mart.) Back in those days, Red Heart was wool. Acrylic fiber may have existed then, but nobody had gotten the twisted idea to turn it into yarn that people could use. It was nice because it came in a pull skein instead of a hank of yarn you had to wind into a ball. You didn't have to hunt for the end of the yarn to know where to start it pulling from the center, either. That yarn end had a little red heart-shaped foil tag folded over on it.

I actually enjoy using my ball winder to turn hanks of yarn into pretty little cakes. But I sometimes miss those little red hearts.