Joann's Fabrics stores are going out of business. Twenty years ago that chain was one of the Big Four retailers that together sold ninety percent of the needlework supplies in the United States, and now...
I was in the local Joann's outlet for the going-out-of-business sale. Would it be a chance to get a great bargain even on really basic yarn, like Red Heart acrylic?
It would not. Even for the going-out-of-business sale, Joann's demanded more money per skein of Red Heart acrylic than Wal-Mart did.
I'd have to forgive that, though I might not have felt able to justify buying any Red Heart acrylic, from a locally owned store. Joe's and Ann's General Store (Since 1920), if such a place had existed, would probably have been buying their Red Heart acrylic from Wal-Mart, and marking it up by only 25 cents a skein would have qualified as a sincere effort to keep their business real.
But Joann's was a nationwide, I think even continent-wide store, a serious competitor with Wal-Mart; Joann's had stores as big as Wal-Mart with only the needlecraft department, so Joann's could and should have offered all kinds of yarn Wal-Mart didn't have room for, at competitive prices...the way Michael's and Hobby Lobby have stayed afloat by doing.
And did they? No. It's sad that Joann's went down but it's instructive to remember that why they went down is, among other things, that all they learned from Hobby Lobby was Hobby Lobby's big mistake. Joann's didn't sell specialty yarns but crammed their shelves with cheap store-brand substitutes...not for luxury yarns Wal-Mart didn't sell and most knitters couldn't afford, but for Red Heart.
Seriously.
At the time of writing, even with inflation, you can still buy enough Red Heart to make a sweater for an average adult for $10 or less. The world does not really need cheaper substitutes for Red Heart; they exist because other manufacturers keep trying to replicate Red Heart yarn and not succeeding.
For most of this winter I've been wearing a tabard I knitted for myself out of the cheap substitute for Red Heart Wal-Mart tried to offer. Whether or not you ever wear acrylic jackets, here's what you need to know: Red Heart acrylic jackets are indestructible. People dig them up from under cubic yards of mud after a flood, run them through the washer and dryer, and wear them again. The yarn bounces back to its original shape. The colors don't fade or run. Nothing made out of Red Heart looks posh to knitters who recognize it, because we all recognize the cheap blanket yarn dime stores sell for kids to learn on and crocheters to make tacky afghans out of, but you just about have to snip or burn Red Heart to make it look any worse than it always did. I'm not a snob; I don't think it looks bad at all.
I wore an over-dress made of Red Heart acrylic when it seemed necessary to run a few miles in heavy rain. It stretched, of course, as it got wet. I was holding the hem up around the waist and it was still a long dress. It looked ruined. I took it to the laundromat the next day. Pop through the washer, pop through the dryer...it was just the right length for me, same as it had been when I finished knitting it.
But I had bought a pound of this cheaper substitute for Red Heart at Wal-Mart for test purposes, so I made myself a tabard. A tabard is a personal blanket with a hole in the middle for your head, sometimes with flaps to extend over shoulders. I knitted it just long enough to pile around me while sitting down in cold weather. I knitted exactly two inches of V into the front neckline. Before it was even knitted the cheap yarn started to pill, which makes it look as if it's been washed and dried many times, but it has yet to be fully immersed in water; it's been worn like a blanket rather than a shirt and has yet to be soiled. And already the hems flap around my ankles and the V is down to my waistline. And the shoulder flaps, knitted to extend an inch or two above my elbows, are forming long sleeves.
Most cheap acrylics will stretch--beyond all imagining, if they're handled while wet--and are not really worth knitting. You can use them to knit itsy-bitsy patches of color, but after your first twenty or thirty knitted projects you have a stash of scrap yarn that you use to knit itsy-bitsy patches of color. Probably the best use for cheap acrylic yarn is as stuffing. There have been other acrylics, most originally made by Monsanto and trademarked as "Wintuk," that will make fabrics whose stretching can be controlled, and I always like to experiment with the new brands to see into which category they fall, but...sad but true...most of them are execrable.
(Caron Dazzle-Aire was probably, of all acrylic yarns ever made, the closest to Red Heart in durability. It was a casualty of people's feelings toward Monsanto. I have Dazzle-Aire sweaters that I still wear, and Dazzle-Aire yarn in my wool room that I'm still knitting for sale, because this yarn really does feel like kittens' fur and wear like iron; Dazzle-Aire doesn't even pill as much as many smoother yarns pill. Caron Simply Soft, which is still made by a company that bought the spinning operation away from Monsanto, will stretch in use, but reasonably--a blanket will stretch enough to tuck under your toes, not enough to become a carpet rather than a blanket. I can't recommend any other acrylic yarn currently on the market. If, however, the color appeals to a small child, I would buy more of Hobby Lobby's "Yarn Bee" acrylic to make a child's sweater; it'll stay cute through one or two wearings, which is about how long it takes a small child either to lose a sweater or to outgrow it.)
So this Joann's store had whole shelves full of cheap acrylic, for which they wanted about as much money per ounce as Wal-Mart wants for Red Heart, and a few leftover skeins of Red Heart, for which they wanted more than Wal-Mart wants for Red Heart. And they wondered why nobody was buying this yarn even on this going-out-of-business sale. Nobody with the math skills to knit would ever have bought yarn from Joann's, because they never offered competitive prices. Even for their going-out-of-business sale their prices aren't competitive.
Joann's primary commodity was woven fabric. I don't buy enough woven fabric to judge, but it didn't seem to me that their prices on woven fabric looked very competitive either.
How did Joann's ever get to be a competitor with Wal-Mart, Michael's, and Hobby Lobby, whose prices are generally competitive with one another? There's only one explanation: Joann's was there first, in places that didn't have Wal-Mart, Michael's, or Hobby Lobby.
And so, although in some places Joann's may be missed...we can't remember it as a casualty of the economic damage the COVID panic has done. The demise of Joann's looks, from here, like a simple and desirable market correction.
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