This Week’s Consumer Product Safety Recall is…YARN

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Gracious diiddktaby
me! This brand of yarn can unravel! Have you ever heard of such a thing? It’s just too scary! How irresponsible can a yarn maker be? No wonder the Consumer Product Safety Commission just issued this dire warning:

Name of Product: Bernat Tizzy Yarn

Hazard: In finished knit or crochet items, the yarn can unravel or snag and form a loop, posing an entanglement hazard to young children.

Incidents/Injuries: Bernat has received two reports of children becoming entangled from unraveling or snagging yarn blankets. No injuries have been reported.

Remedy: Consumers should immediately stop using the yarn or finished yarn projects, keep them out of the reach of young children, and contact Bernat for a full refund.

Remember! Children are only safe near items that can never unravel or make a loop. Kindly avoid all necklaces, ponytails, jumbo rubber bands, snakes, shoelaces, licorice whips, octopi, thread, phone cords, scarves, kites, jumpropes, taffy (long form), fishing line, string cheese, and, of course, marionettes. – L.

Yarn: The silent killer.

Yarn: The silent killer.

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42 Responses to This Week’s Consumer Product Safety Recall is…YARN

  1. Havva March 20, 2015 at 4:52 pm #

    On the radio yesterday I heard about people not getting those airbags that explode and spray shrapnel replaced due to “recall fatigue.”

  2. Powers March 20, 2015 at 4:55 pm #

    So… are you saying it’s /not/ a strangulation hazard?

  3. Nadine March 20, 2015 at 4:55 pm #

    if only the world was threadless…. We would all wear felted clothes and scratch like crazy.

  4. common sense March 20, 2015 at 5:14 pm #

    everytime they issue one of these recalls i think that their very own property and possesions need to be inspected and removed and destroyedf for their own saftey. what’s good for the goose is good fror the gander[in addition this is the most assinine rediculous insane thing i have ever heard.]

  5. BL March 20, 2015 at 5:32 pm #

    Create an agency whose mission is to ban stuff, they will ban stuff.

  6. Emily Morris March 20, 2015 at 5:34 pm #

    I know next to nothing about knitting and crocheting. Is the tendency to unravel in an already-created piece a natural tendency of this yarn or does this only happen with badly-knitted items? If it’s the former, the company ought to produce a better quality product, but a product recall is ridiculous. If it’s the latter, lousy knitters clearly ought not to have children if they’re going to leave death traps such as blankets and mittens lying about.

  7. lollipoplover March 20, 2015 at 5:36 pm #

    Another grandma letting her imagination run wild while knitting and watching Nancy Grace.
    Save the babies from their own sweaters!

  8. Emily Morris March 20, 2015 at 5:36 pm #

    The more I look at the cute baby on the yarn’s packaging, the angrier I get. Poor baby wearing an evil shroud of destruction. And it’s probably a pervert sweater, too.

  9. Reader March 20, 2015 at 5:38 pm #

    Emily – normally it would be due to the knitting or crocheting having an error in it, yes. Knitting tends to unravel faster than crochet when this happens. It’s possible that “fluffy” yarns like these might make errors harder to spot, but we can hardly ban ALL blankets made from novelty yarn… can we?

  10. Eric March 20, 2015 at 5:39 pm #

    When everything’s dangerous, nothing is.

  11. Kristen March 20, 2015 at 5:48 pm #

    Oh horrors! I OWN THIS YARN! In TWO colors! And I have kids over my house every week teaching them to knit! I guess I should count myself fortunate no one has succumbed to this silent killer. Now, like the yarn, I’m in a tizzy! 😉

    Actually, I bought it because it looked fun and cute but it’s been sitting unused because it’s a total pain in the neck to work with. Now it sits in the bottom of my yarn bin- evidently quietly plotting a coup.

  12. Steve Harper March 20, 2015 at 5:52 pm #

    Of course they have to recall the yarn. Unraveling the yarn is the cat’s job. You don’t want to take work away from cats do you.

  13. serena March 20, 2015 at 7:29 pm #

    Sew-ology makes buttons and the back of the package says: “Warning! Not for children under 14 years of age” But since I love to live dangerously, I still sew them onto the sweaters I knit for children under 14.

  14. Lorie March 20, 2015 at 9:39 pm #

    These comments are great!!

  15. R March 21, 2015 at 3:16 am #

    I hope nobody at CPSC ever reads about hair tourniquets, they’d expect everybody who has contact with infants (or sheds near them) to go bald.

  16. Emily Guy Birken March 21, 2015 at 9:39 am #

    When I first started co-sleeping with my son as a new born (because he completely refused to sleep solo) I read everything I could find about the safety of co-sleeping. (I had drunk the “You will kill your baby!!!!” kool-aid). One “expert” claimed that long hair on mom was a strangulation hazard for co-sleeping babies. I wish I could say that reading that howler was the moment I realized my panic at the “dangers” of co-sleeping was overblown, but I am embarrassed to admit that I put my hair up to go to sleep at least twice before I came to my senses.

    I feel like we need to sit the “experts” down and remind them that just because they can imagine something happening doesn’t make it likely or even possible.

  17. Rick Ranger March 21, 2015 at 12:04 pm #

    This is a voluntary recall by the company because this batch of yarn came out extra un-ravelly and is marketed towards babies, so they don’t want to be on the hook when someone fucks up and gets their kid strangled. Good for them I say.

  18. Vicky March 21, 2015 at 12:26 pm #

    I am at a loss for words at the complete ridiculousness of this…

  19. Papilio March 21, 2015 at 1:39 pm #

    Zero tolerance for all words vaguely resembling “threat”!

    @Kristen: Can’t you just unravel it yourself (hey, it can’t be hard 😉 ) and then use it as ordinary yarn? I mean, it looks like a thread forming loops that are held together by a second thread. Whatever you make of it will be unique 🙂

  20. hancock March 21, 2015 at 4:43 pm #

    It’s so dangerous! The chaotic evil demon yarn may come part and passively strangle children, small pets, and the elderly and infirm. All of this yarn, and projects made with this yarn must be immediately exersized, incinerated, and buried at precisely midnight under the full moon with the proper rituals and ceremonies (consult with your local JoAnn Fabrics priestess for the appropriate measures).

    I think I see what is meant by “unravelling” of the yarn, meaning the threads colorful loops can be pulled out; as opposed to unravelling of the entire project; but if they are going to issue a safety recall for loose loops, they may as well issue a saftey recall on all yarn, string, rope, and thread longer than eight inches. All can potentially strangle, choke, or cut off circulation in pets and children. They should have just issued a quality recall. The process of what is considered child and pet safe is looking more an more like mystisism. You just never know what people will imagine to be dangerous next

  21. Shannon Kunkle March 21, 2015 at 8:23 pm #

    I would laugh at the absurdity of this but I witnessed something like this in person recently. I was in a baking supplies store around Christmas when a grandmother came in to return a jar of small silver ball sprinkles. They were the kind that we had when I was a kid (the ones that look like little bb’s) and the older they got, the more fun it was to try to see if we could break them in half with our teeth. She said her husband had warned her that she shouldn’t use these around her young grandchildren because “they wouldn’t want an accident.” Never mind that the woman has probably been using these same sprinkles for years in her holiday baking with no incidents. So now if even cookie sprinkles and yarn are dangerous, really nothing is safe.

  22. Liz March 21, 2015 at 10:24 pm #

    You forgot spaghetti. Every year <1 children have died having soft, wet spaghetti tangled around them. I'm sure they'll issue that recall later in the week.
    Ugh, the lawyers win again.

  23. Bmj2k March 22, 2015 at 1:14 am #

    Kids can get severe sunburn while outside. Do we recall the sun or their skin?

  24. Cathy March 22, 2015 at 1:38 am #

    Emily Morris no it’s not. At least, not like this yarn does. It’s already been a problem. This is yarn specifically for BABY items so the warning makes sense. It’s not a scare tactic. It hasn’t been banned by any agency. The company realized it was a problem and had numerous complaints so they decided to do the responsible thing and do a voluntary recall. It unravels and stretches enough that a baby could get it caught around their necks and be choked.

  25. sexhysteria March 22, 2015 at 2:17 am #

    Yarn is another under-reported cause of child sex abuse. The frequency of cases of children sexually abusing themselves with unraveled yarn is probably grossly under-reported due to the shame felt by families about the incident, the tendency of CPS and other law enforcement investigators to blame the victim, etc.

    No responsible adult can deny the potential harm risked by a child who sexually abuses herself with unraveled yarn. The overstimulation will probably cause permanent mental trauma. The innocent child’s precious trust in her caregivers will be destroyed since she depended on them to protect her from overstimulation. The child will eventually grow up to become hyper-sexual, or hypo-sexual depending on the individual case (genetic predisposition and other unique environmental risk factors).

  26. Kenny Felder March 22, 2015 at 7:42 am #

    Even more than usual, this sounds like The Onion.

  27. Emily Morris March 22, 2015 at 9:33 am #

    Reader and Cathy, thanks!

  28. Renee Anne March 22, 2015 at 12:46 pm #

    As a knitter, I wanted to slap the idiots that came up with this recall. Yarn unravels and gets tangled but I would hope that someone would, you know, NOTICE when it’s falling apart and get rid of it! And seriously, who knits with small children around? I know I can’t…

  29. hineata March 22, 2015 at 2:13 pm #

    I was going to comment on this, but sadly I was killed decades ago by my grandmother, who abused me severely by using my arms to unwind skeins of wool, suffocating me and all her other grandchildren in the process. I didn’t live long enough to write inane comments like this one on the Internet (what Internet?). And I got off lightly …my best friend died when the sheep in the paddock next door spontaneously unwound, burying the family beneath layers of yarn.

    Wool kills – you have been warned! 😀

  30. Papilio March 22, 2015 at 2:24 pm #

    @Hineata: Suddenly New Zealand is the most dangerous country on the planet ever – and it has nothing to do with Mordor… 😛

  31. hineata March 22, 2015 at 3:15 pm #

    Oh Papilio, don’t mention Mordor. Sheep enjoy the ritualistic trampling of tourists as they gather at the ruins of that great mountain…..the tourists, that is. The sheep have lived there for generations, feeding off the evil that is Sauron. And unraveling on the unsuspecting.

    We are slowly winning the war…there are only 10 sheep for every one of us now, whereas there were 22 when I was born. But how long we can last out is uncertain. …every night before retiring I have to unwind the yarn from around the house. There’s a reason why we’re called the Land of the Long White Cloud. ..it’s all that fleece building up over the generations….

    But then, I already suffocated, so it’s no issue of mine 😊…

  32. Papilio March 22, 2015 at 3:40 pm #

    @Hineata: I learn something new every day! :-O
    That sounds horrible! I reckon no one counts sheep to fall asleep, as that would lead to nightmares 🙂
    So, did all those Orks used to be sheep, until Sauron came along? Do NZ parents scare their children with the BEEH-gieman??

    You can be our FRK-ghost – we already have a witch after all 😀

  33. Amy March 22, 2015 at 6:06 pm #

    Did you know that “ravel” and “unravel” mean the same thing?

  34. BL March 22, 2015 at 6:15 pm #

    @Amy
    “Did you know that “ravel” and “unravel” mean the same thing?”

    And yet nobody ever refers to Unravel’s Bolero.

  35. hineata March 22, 2015 at 6:56 pm #

    @Papilio – are you mad? Of course we have to count sheep before we sleep….if any of the 10 are missing, you can bet they’re off somewhere planning insurrection, and then no one sleeps 😀😀.

  36. Warren March 22, 2015 at 11:03 pm #

    This is why all three of our dogs are herding breeds. They keep us safe from the roaming gangs of psychotic sheep.

    On another note, I encourage people to eat Ontario Lamb, as thousands of coyotes cannot be wrong.

  37. DrTorch March 23, 2015 at 9:32 am #

    Ridiculous.

    The real reason this should be banned is because it’s UGLY.

  38. AmyO March 23, 2015 at 9:40 am #

    Wait a minute.. isn’t that the case with anything made with any yarn? Why this particular yarn? I’m also curious about the entanglement.. were the children found wrapped like a mummy, or did their fingers get pinched? I’m so confused.

  39. Mandie March 23, 2015 at 11:54 am #

    It’s probably overkill, but they are not talking about the knitting unraveling, but yarn itself. If you look at it closely, it’s made up of little bits of yarn plied back on itself over and over again. Those are basically twisted loops of yarn all over the yarn, and when those become untwisted they can be an entanglement hazard. I wouldn’t use this yarn for a baby item, but otherwise it should be fine.

  40. wendy March 23, 2015 at 3:56 pm #

    I have tried to knit with that particular yarn. It is horrible stufff, I gave up. I agree, ban it 🙂

    BTW friends don’t let friends drink and knit.

  41. knitapeace March 24, 2015 at 1:42 pm #

    What’s a phone cord?

  42. Ron Skurat March 29, 2015 at 1:16 am #

    and Slinkys – absolutely deadly!