I've found Marriner's Essentials range brilliant and am disappointed that it's being discontinued. However, I tried the basic double knit and that is fine, not quite as soft as the essentials but more body. I also tried a few balls of sparkle as that seemed to be the only double knit black yarn available. It seems slighter finer yarn, but not enough to cause a problem using it as stripes. The only yarn I was really disappointed with was the Mermaid DK - I found knots in every single ball, and two knots in many of the balls. Considering I've never found a knot in the cheaper Essentials yarn I was disappointed. I did email about it, and did get an email back, but wasn't particularly happy with the response and didn't get a follow up about the problem which I was told was being investigated, so I would have hoped to hear the result of that. I will be shopping with Marriner again, but I won't be buying Mermaid again until I get an answer about it.