Seemingly harmless, benign skeins of yarns seem pretty normal. Sure, they have that texture thing going and, of course, we all know about the pretty handdyed colors on their side. But underneath the harmless looking pretty colors and texture, they have harmful little secret plied into each and every skein.

Yarn Fumes.

Yes, fumes given off by the yarn, carefully added by the yarn manufacturers and dyers. Yarn fumes can cause knitters to go into a buying frenzy within mere seconds of being within 50 feet of yarn for sale.

Side effects include: Knitters blindly scooping up any yarn they can grab, regardless of fiber content and color. Knitters will become aggressive, fighting amongst themselves to buy every skein of yarn they can.

In the early stages of exposure, knitters have low immunity to yarn fumes; quickly snapping up novelty, fun yarns. Some knitters stay at this level for many years without showing advanced stages of exposure. Other knitters quickly advance on to more severe stages: handpainted sock yarns, luxury yarns, and limited edition. Many will exhibit signs of several different stages of exposure at once.

Most knitters will have no recollection of buying said yarn. They will walk out of the LYS thinking they had only gone in to buy needles and will be shocked and surprised when they come home with a bag large enough to hold all the week’s groceries. Fiber fairs and wool festivals have some of the highest known concentrations in the world causing some of the most extreme documented exposures known.

Sources of yarn fumes: Clearance yarn is particularly high in yarn fumes. There is no such thing as enough yarn in the midst of exposure to yarn fumes. Sock and lace yarn seem to have the highest concentration of these dangerous yarn fumes. Cheap, mass-produced acrylic yarn seems to have the lowest concentration of yarn fumes. Even roving and raw fleeces are not harmless; breeders of fleece-bearing animals have carefully bred their flocks to include yarn fumes in the raw fiber.

There is no escaping the dangers of yarn fumes. One of yarn fumes mysterious properties is the ability to somehow be transferred to catalogs from yarn shops and transported right to the knitter’s home. Even if the unbeknown knitter does not receive yarn catalogs, exposure can happen through access to the internet. It was believed that the fumes were using fiber optic cables to spread, but further research has shown even wireless internet carries these fumes into knitter’s homes.

Chronic exposure side-effects include: A large stash that the knitter has no recollection of buying of a variety of odd colors, textures and gauge such as metallic fun fur, neon eyelash, 20 miles worth of sock yarn, gossamer lace weight yarn, chunky chic yarn and so forth.

To date, this has been no legislation into banning yarn fumes by either the knitting public, expect for the knitter stuck with a mountain of cheap acrylic, or yarn manufacturers. However, yarn manufacturers are suspected of spending millions of dollars into studies on increasing yarn fume exposure to knitters.