Changing Fashions
Shortly after I got into bed tonight I knew this wasn't going to work. It had been getting chillier all day, so I put on my snuggly, thicker pyjamas and my woolly bedsocks. H brought up the hot water bottle to keep our toes warm as we fell asleep. But I didn't. I woke up. It happens. Hence the time stamp on this entry!
Apparently there has been a certain amount of online dispute (and knowing online disputes, probably nastiness too) about 'Yarn Snobbery'.
For Readers who don't know, 'Yarn Snobbery' is what some people call other people's choices to knit or crochet (or other forms of fibre crafting) with natural fibres:- wool (100% from 100% real sheep), alpaca (who wouldn't want to use alpaca?) or cotton (hmmm, see why 'hmmm' later.)
"Wool is expensive." The anti-'Snobbery' brigade say. "Acrylic yarn is much cheaper, and easier to care for."
I dispute the 'easier to care for' bit. Woollen sweaters, etc, are easy to care for. You let them soak (in a no-rinse wool wash) for up to half an hour, then you spin them down and carefully lay them flat to dry, which doesn't take all that long even in the middle of winter.
OK, so you can stick your acrylic knitwear straight into the washing machine, then into the tumble drier and it's ready to wear in half a day or so. But you still have to be careful. I once knitted D a pretty blue jumper in an acrylic yarn. This was fine until one day she was careless with the washing machine setting and it went through a 'hot wash' programme.
A wool jumper might have shrunk and/or felted. Acrylic gets 'killed' by hot washing. It goes all dull and lank and horrible, irreversibly. So that was that jumper.
These days I only knit for people I know will a) appreciate the garment, and b) look after it. A well knitted woollen jumper can easily last for ten or twenty years if cared for properly. Considering the hours involved in the knitting and finishing of a garment this is no bad thing. Also you have a unique garment which fits you properly, so why not look after it and wear it for the next ten or twenty years.
Think about it - you have a good quality jumper, which fits. It cost £x, or $x and y hours to make. Why wouldn't you want to get value for money and wear it for as long as it was a good jumper?
"But wool is expensive!" The yarn 'anti-snobs' cry.
Srsly? How many acrylic jumpers would you need to buy to last you, looking good, ten or twenty years? Ok, so you'd have different jumpers. But how many people really wear just the limited palette of shades, or even 'basic black'? How many black tops, jumpers, t-shirts etc do you need at one time?
Besides which, acrylic yarn is a form of plastic, so made from oil - a diminishing resource, and virtually indestructible. From the time you first wash your acrylic jumper plastic microfibres are released into the water environment. And if you don't know about plastic microfibres and how they're getting into everything, even the seafood we eat, go Google.
Plus, being a form of plastic, your jumper, once you've tired of it, or (better) worn it out, just won't rot down. Ever. It'll just sit there in landfill, shedding microfibres, until 'the earth dissolves like snow' or future generations come mining landfill dumps to reclaim the plastic we've so heedlessly thrown away. (Hmmm, at least then it might be re-used.)
And that's without all the environmental considerations of finding and extracting the original oil. Then the processing of it into whatever, including acrylic yarn. All of which processes generate their own waste streams - sometimes into streams!
But to return to the 'price' point - you could have on real wool jumper for ten or twenty years, which can then be turned into maybe a felted bag, and eventually composted. Or you can have ten or twenty acrylic jumpers which will be shedding plastic microfibres and contributing to plastic waste as they wear out. And over ten or twenty years, the repeat acrylic may well be the pricier option too.
It's kinda like H's socks. I buy four balls of cotton mix sock yarn, for around £36, which I knit into five pairs of socks. These last him around two years. I then darn the toes and re-knit the heels and they last another two years.
Now I could buy five pairs of thin socks for around £6. But he'd wear through the heels in a fortnight. Four weeks max.
So that would be 12 x £6 = £36 per year. Or £144 for four years. At which point the time I spend darning socks looks like time well spent. Particularly when you consider that I knit socks year round anyway. And unlike beaded lace shawls, socks are always useful.
As are real wool (from real sheep) jumpers. Learn to knit. Knit yourself two this year, one next year, one the year after, and you'll be equipped to cope with winter for years to come. Not to mention saving yourself a packet on all those acrylic sweaters you won't be buying and the planet form all that plastic pollution.
And blow 'fashion'. Very few people really look good in yellow, or chartreuse, or even 'basic black'. Besides which, did we really spend our youths rebelling against the sameness of school uniformity to now choose to wear the same as everyone else? What is the difference between enforced school uniform and enforced 'fashionable' uniform, particularly when what is fashionable so often doesn't really suit the fashion victim wearer.
Which leads on to the other 'Fashion Victims' - the ones we don't see, don't hear about. Well, not unless there's a major disaster (and nothing much else going on nearer home!) Remember the Rana Plaza disaster? A garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed, killing many of the garment makers, because it had been shoddily built. Even to Bangladeshi standards.
Now workers in garment production in Bangladesh are forming unions to fight for safely constructed factories, with safe conditions for workers employed in them. For living wages (not the equivalent of £1.25/$1 per day) and for reasonable length days - maybe 8 hours rather than 10, 12 or even 18.
Of course, this puts up the basic price of the garments and Big Chains here in the UK, Europe or the US and Canada won't pay those higher prices (not that they're all that much higher.) So manufacture moves to even less regulated countries.
And what about other things to do with the garment, or fabric-making, factories? Being factories they generate waste as well as garments. What do they do with their waste? Is it disposed of responsibly, safely? Or, especially in the case of dyestuffs and other chemicals, is it just dumped into the nearest water course?
Where do the people who work in these factories get their water? From taps? Or from the nearest water course (now polluted by factory waste)? And what about people living down-river from a fabric-making town with many such factories? What are they getting with their water?
Then all rivers end in the sea - bearing their loads of pollutants. So what goes around comes around.
And as for the pesticides and fertilisers, not to mention water, used in growing crops to manufacture cloth for clothes . . . The whole earth and everyone and everything in it is becoming victims of 'Fashion'.
Maybe it's time to take stock. To take a long, hard look at what we have in our wardrobes already and to wear that until it wears out. Then replace it with fewer, better made, maybe ethically made and fairly traded garments, in natural fibres. And wear them for longer.
After all, we don't have to follow 'Fashion' and we certainly don't have to follow the diktats of the Big Stores. If they don't supply decently made, ethically sourced, fairly traded clothing - don't buy from them. There are such suppliers 'out there' and there are more of them each year.
How about we give them our business? And if enough of us do, even the Big Stores will have to up their game and their trading practices just to remain in business. Which sounds like wins all round to me.
What do you think, Dear Reader?
Y'all have a good day now!
Apparently there has been a certain amount of online dispute (and knowing online disputes, probably nastiness too) about 'Yarn Snobbery'.
For Readers who don't know, 'Yarn Snobbery' is what some people call other people's choices to knit or crochet (or other forms of fibre crafting) with natural fibres:- wool (100% from 100% real sheep), alpaca (who wouldn't want to use alpaca?) or cotton (hmmm, see why 'hmmm' later.)
"Wool is expensive." The anti-'Snobbery' brigade say. "Acrylic yarn is much cheaper, and easier to care for."
I dispute the 'easier to care for' bit. Woollen sweaters, etc, are easy to care for. You let them soak (in a no-rinse wool wash) for up to half an hour, then you spin them down and carefully lay them flat to dry, which doesn't take all that long even in the middle of winter.
OK, so you can stick your acrylic knitwear straight into the washing machine, then into the tumble drier and it's ready to wear in half a day or so. But you still have to be careful. I once knitted D a pretty blue jumper in an acrylic yarn. This was fine until one day she was careless with the washing machine setting and it went through a 'hot wash' programme.
A wool jumper might have shrunk and/or felted. Acrylic gets 'killed' by hot washing. It goes all dull and lank and horrible, irreversibly. So that was that jumper.
These days I only knit for people I know will a) appreciate the garment, and b) look after it. A well knitted woollen jumper can easily last for ten or twenty years if cared for properly. Considering the hours involved in the knitting and finishing of a garment this is no bad thing. Also you have a unique garment which fits you properly, so why not look after it and wear it for the next ten or twenty years.
Think about it - you have a good quality jumper, which fits. It cost £x, or $x and y hours to make. Why wouldn't you want to get value for money and wear it for as long as it was a good jumper?
"But wool is expensive!" The yarn 'anti-snobs' cry.
Srsly? How many acrylic jumpers would you need to buy to last you, looking good, ten or twenty years? Ok, so you'd have different jumpers. But how many people really wear just the limited palette of shades, or even 'basic black'? How many black tops, jumpers, t-shirts etc do you need at one time?
Besides which, acrylic yarn is a form of plastic, so made from oil - a diminishing resource, and virtually indestructible. From the time you first wash your acrylic jumper plastic microfibres are released into the water environment. And if you don't know about plastic microfibres and how they're getting into everything, even the seafood we eat, go Google.
Plus, being a form of plastic, your jumper, once you've tired of it, or (better) worn it out, just won't rot down. Ever. It'll just sit there in landfill, shedding microfibres, until 'the earth dissolves like snow' or future generations come mining landfill dumps to reclaim the plastic we've so heedlessly thrown away. (Hmmm, at least then it might be re-used.)
And that's without all the environmental considerations of finding and extracting the original oil. Then the processing of it into whatever, including acrylic yarn. All of which processes generate their own waste streams - sometimes into streams!
But to return to the 'price' point - you could have on real wool jumper for ten or twenty years, which can then be turned into maybe a felted bag, and eventually composted. Or you can have ten or twenty acrylic jumpers which will be shedding plastic microfibres and contributing to plastic waste as they wear out. And over ten or twenty years, the repeat acrylic may well be the pricier option too.
It's kinda like H's socks. I buy four balls of cotton mix sock yarn, for around £36, which I knit into five pairs of socks. These last him around two years. I then darn the toes and re-knit the heels and they last another two years.
Now I could buy five pairs of thin socks for around £6. But he'd wear through the heels in a fortnight. Four weeks max.
So that would be 12 x £6 = £36 per year. Or £144 for four years. At which point the time I spend darning socks looks like time well spent. Particularly when you consider that I knit socks year round anyway. And unlike beaded lace shawls, socks are always useful.
As are real wool (from real sheep) jumpers. Learn to knit. Knit yourself two this year, one next year, one the year after, and you'll be equipped to cope with winter for years to come. Not to mention saving yourself a packet on all those acrylic sweaters you won't be buying and the planet form all that plastic pollution.
And blow 'fashion'. Very few people really look good in yellow, or chartreuse, or even 'basic black'. Besides which, did we really spend our youths rebelling against the sameness of school uniformity to now choose to wear the same as everyone else? What is the difference between enforced school uniform and enforced 'fashionable' uniform, particularly when what is fashionable so often doesn't really suit the fashion victim wearer.
Which leads on to the other 'Fashion Victims' - the ones we don't see, don't hear about. Well, not unless there's a major disaster (and nothing much else going on nearer home!) Remember the Rana Plaza disaster? A garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed, killing many of the garment makers, because it had been shoddily built. Even to Bangladeshi standards.
Now workers in garment production in Bangladesh are forming unions to fight for safely constructed factories, with safe conditions for workers employed in them. For living wages (not the equivalent of £1.25/$1 per day) and for reasonable length days - maybe 8 hours rather than 10, 12 or even 18.
Of course, this puts up the basic price of the garments and Big Chains here in the UK, Europe or the US and Canada won't pay those higher prices (not that they're all that much higher.) So manufacture moves to even less regulated countries.
And what about other things to do with the garment, or fabric-making, factories? Being factories they generate waste as well as garments. What do they do with their waste? Is it disposed of responsibly, safely? Or, especially in the case of dyestuffs and other chemicals, is it just dumped into the nearest water course?
Where do the people who work in these factories get their water? From taps? Or from the nearest water course (now polluted by factory waste)? And what about people living down-river from a fabric-making town with many such factories? What are they getting with their water?
Then all rivers end in the sea - bearing their loads of pollutants. So what goes around comes around.
And as for the pesticides and fertilisers, not to mention water, used in growing crops to manufacture cloth for clothes . . . The whole earth and everyone and everything in it is becoming victims of 'Fashion'.
Maybe it's time to take stock. To take a long, hard look at what we have in our wardrobes already and to wear that until it wears out. Then replace it with fewer, better made, maybe ethically made and fairly traded garments, in natural fibres. And wear them for longer.
After all, we don't have to follow 'Fashion' and we certainly don't have to follow the diktats of the Big Stores. If they don't supply decently made, ethically sourced, fairly traded clothing - don't buy from them. There are such suppliers 'out there' and there are more of them each year.
How about we give them our business? And if enough of us do, even the Big Stores will have to up their game and their trading practices just to remain in business. Which sounds like wins all round to me.
What do you think, Dear Reader?
Y'all have a good day now!