Lovely and perfectly functional
I knit a lot, and I've bought dozens of decorative stitch marker sets over the last couple of decades. Good stitch markers can keep me plowing through challenging or frustrating projects because the joy of seeing them pass through my hands offsets or outweighs the irritation a pattern can cause. Bad stitch markers can send even stockinette TV knitting into hibernation. These are good stitch markers.<br /><br />The main ring, the part the needles pass through and the yarn is most affected by, appears entirely seamless. These aren't a spiral wire cut into split rings but genuine metal rings.<br /><br />The single negative I've found about them -- and it's specific to the Small size for size 7 needles and under -- is that for fingering/sock-weight yarn that's not being used in lace, the rings are thick enough I have to pull a little extra on each stitch after a marker to avoid loose-stitch ladders caused by the extra distance the yarn covers to span the thick rings. The effect is almost negligible, but it's more pronounced than (for example) the loose purl stitch caused by a yarn-forward (not yarn over) coming from knit to purl in ribbing. Where the stitch marker falls between knit and purl in ribbing, it amplifies that effect noticeably. These aren't appropriate markers for doing lots of sock-weight ribbing, so I'll have to use other markers for socks. That's a minor inconvenience to me since, as I mentioned, I have dozens of stitch-marker sets and hundreds of little plain, thin ones. The kind of stitch marker that uses a loop of thin, flexible wire is still my favorite for not creating a gap.<br /><br />That said, this is a very minor and specific way in which these stitch markers aren't the most suitable kind for a particular task, and if I were on vacation with nothing but sock yarn and these markers, I'd use them happily anyway.<br /><br />The trade-off is that these can be used with perfect ease for other types of knitting that most stitch markers are bad to awful for. Lace knitting with lace-weight yarn is one of the most notoriously picky kinds, as ready to snag on even the nicest join of a split ring as on the exposed wire-ends of a wire loop. Any yarn that's even a little fuzzy or that splits easily will snag on most types. Smooth or slick laceweight or cobweb-weight yarns love to slip through mediocre joins and end up passing through a split ring instead of around it, trapping the marker in place. The cat-bead forms the bottom of these markers, and the ring is smooth and solid -- nothing to snag at top or bottom. There is only one exposed wire-end, since the top end goes back down into the top bead. The lower end of the wire is pressed against the lower bead under a little bit of tension from the wire at the top. This isn't a unique or new construction, but it's a tried-and-true construction that's particularly well-executed here. I will happily confirm the seller's claim that this is "Knitting jewelry that is snag free."<br /><br />At one point, I started making my own stitch markers, trying to save money. However, making stitch markers (or other types of jewelry) is a skill in its own right that requires practice, patience, and materials -- time and money I decided I'd rather send knitting than spend getting good enough to make better markers than the mediocre ones available for sale. In other words, I gave up trying to make ideal stitch markers because I wasn't willing to go to the lengths required to make ones as good as these.<br /><br />That last sentence is the answer to any questions about whether the price is fair. Yes, they probably cost the maker only a few dollars for materials -- but maybe a few hundred for lighting, magnification, special pliers, a workspace, and other tools to produce pretty, uniform, and functional ones instead of stabby, staggering, misshapen ones. And that doesn't get into the time spent gaining the experience to produce them reliably and promptly, on-demand. I can make bad stitch markers for $5. I can buy mediocre ones for $8-10 a set elsewhere. Since I don't want to fiddle with bad or mediocre stitch markers instead of spending that time knitting, I'll happily pay $15-20 for these. It's fair pricing for the quality.<br /><br />Summary: Speaking as someone who's been knitting for 40 years and who cares more than the average knitter about the markers I use: Not only would I buy these again, I have a second set in my shopping cart already. I will be delighted to buy others for future projects. I give them my highest recommendation for everything except knitting socks, for which better ones could be found but for which these are still good.
Rating: 5 stars