A question we’ve been asked for years: what’s the yarn loop for?

Simply put, it's a little eyelet on your yarn label which you can thread an end of the yarn through, so as not to forget the colour, weight and lot number of the yarn you ordered. Many people collect these and keep them in a knitting book so that they may reorder the same yarn as a previous project without the struggle of trying to remember or trawling through the depths of your inbox to find that order confirmation email. It has created quite a divide between those who think it's useless, and those who can’t imagine life without it.

For the latter, the yarn loop is essential to any project - just imagine having to invisibly darn up a jumper 10 years down the line and not remembering the original yarn! A disaster. It can be the difference between a flawless sweater and a chaotic patchwork piece which loosely resembles a pullover. This is where a knitting project book comes in - it's a way of collecting all the yarn labels of all the yarns you’ve ever used - who wouldn’t want one?!

On the other hand, this may seem like a lot of faff to some and I’m sure plenty would argue that 10 years down the line, a sweater couldn’t possibly be the original colour anyway… Who really separates their washing afterall? Not to mention that there is actually a distinct beauty in highlighting the repairs that we make to our most cherished garments. Darning often reminds me of Kintsugi - the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces together with gold. It's a small reminder of just how loved the item was and just how loved it will continue to be. It's a second chance to highlight the beauty held within those immortal stitches.

For us in the Mill, the yarn loop also distinguishes between a dyed and undyed yarn - silver is one of our dyed ranges and gold is an undyed one. It's just a nice distinction we make and we think it looks really pretty too - everyone loves a shiny thing! We like to think that this is just one of those little touches which makes our packaging stand out as a cut above the rest. It keeps the devoted-knitting-book-people happy and it's not a massive inconvenience to anyone else so it's a no-brainer for us!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the yarn loop… love it or hate it?