We Need To Talk About Lleyn
November 29, 2011 3:45 AM Subscribe

November is not just about Movember - we're now firmly into Wovember, the month-long campaign by knitters to celebrate wool fibres and denounce misleading marketing. But what do we mean when we talk about 'wool'?
posted by mippy (74 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite

To my mind there is no reason why we can’t wrest the word wool back from meaning all yarn, or all warm and fuzzy cloth (as it clearly does for some UK retailers) to its correct application to cloth spun, knitted and woven from the fleece-of-the-sheep.

I was reading a book recently about American industrial practices written in 1903. The author had an entire chapter devoted to the Woollen Industry and he made an nteresting observation explaining the difference between English and American clothes manufacture:

"... the ordinary American is more anxious than the ordinary Englishman to have clothes that look smart rather than wear well. Also he wants them cheap - from the American idea of cheapness. A British working man gets a serviceable suit, and it may be two or three years before he discards it. It its latter days it will be dirty, greasy, baggy-kneed, and frayed. The American working man never wears a suit till it gets in that condition. He has something neat, well-fitting, and of latest cut. It may only be poor shoddy. In three of four months, when it begins to go to pieces, he has got tired of the suit.... I am not overlooking the fact that, man for man, the American is much more solicitous about the smartness of his appearance than is his con temper on this side of the Atlantic. Therfore the second reason why American woollen goods are inferior is that the American would rather have something that looked good than was really good."

- Fraser, John Foster. America at Work, Cassell and Company Ltd, 1903, p 233-234

So no. There is no chance to wrest back "flannel wool" from describing a soft, warm, cheap, machine-washable, cotton shirt.
posted by three blind mice at 4:25 AM on November 29, 2011 [6 favorites]

Yikes. I hadn't even thought about this. It's a bit like fruit 'juice' and other stuff where you have to read the label. Too bad.
posted by carter at 4:28 AM on November 29, 2011

Why do the British hate the word "yarn" so much? Their insistence on referring to the cheapest, squeakiest, acrylic yarns as "wool" caught me out on eBay when I first moved here. I thought I'd found a great deal on enough fuzzy wool to crochet a blanket, but realised I'd actually paid over the odds for some awful pilly acrylic. I was not best pleased.
posted by cilantro at 4:31 AM on November 29, 2011 [6 favorites]

I actually want acrylic clearly marked, because I like acrylic sweaters for everyday (less itchy, machine washable).

Ironically, in Canada we seem to have real wool everywhere, and no acrylic sweaters to be found. We're probably buying up all the British supply.
posted by jb at 4:39 AM on November 29, 2011

when I first moved here. I thought I'd found a great deal on enough fuzzy wool to crochet a blanket, but realised I'd actually paid over the odds for some awful pilly acrylic. I was not best pleased.

You seem to have acclimated in most other ways, though.
posted by DU at 4:46 AM on November 29, 2011 [11 favorites]

Words mean what we use them to mean. In Britain, "wool" means yarn. Citing the history of the word does not change its current usage. Sorry, but you've lost that battle. Maybe it's time for the British woolen industry to mandate the use of "sheep's wool." But you can't fight descriptivism.
posted by rikschell at 4:50 AM on November 29, 2011

Words mean what we use them to mean.

They may also have a legal meaning. Is that the case in the UK for "wool"? I would have assumed it was in the US, but this discussion casts doubt on it.
posted by DU at 5:07 AM on November 29, 2011

I don't know if it's a law, but in the States this doesn't happen. "Wool" means it comes from an animal. You might use a modifier if the animal isn't a sheep, i.e. "alpaca wool". If something is acrylic or viscose or cotton, generally the label says so, and so does the catalog.
posted by mneekadon at 5:18 AM on November 29, 2011

The term wool under the Act means the fiber from the fleece of the sheep or lamb or hair of the Angora or Cashmere goat (and may include the so-called specialty fibers from the hair of the camel, alpaca, llama, and una) which has never been reclaimed from any woven or felted wool product. [15 USCS § 68]. - US Wool Products Labeling Act

posted by DU at 5:21 AM on November 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

Generally, I only care whether a fiber is wool vs. acryllic if I'm going to be the one knitting it. Fortunately, yarn stores are all up-front about the content of the skeins and hanks and such.

When purchasing store-bought, I'm more concerned with "does it itch", "is it expensive to the point that I'll feel like I have to take out a loan" and "does the garment make me look like a stuffed cabbage" than I am with "is it made of a specific fiber".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:22 AM on November 29, 2011

D'oh - hit "post" too soon.

There's a whole other "wool vs. not" controversy in the knitting community that I thought this'd be about, but that's more about what a person chooses to knit with -- the "wool is 100% natural, I care about my garments and acryllic is bad for the earth" knitters squaring up against the "acryllic is mad cheap and you can throw it in the washing machine" knitters. Maybe that distinction is leading to this one?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:26 AM on November 29, 2011

the "acryllic is mad cheap and you can throw it in the washing machine" knitters

My wife crochets a little, not even that much, and I cannot imagine having the budget for her to use wool. I actually didn't realize how expensive wool was until I was out with a friend buying yarn who held up like $40 worth of wool and pronounced it "probably enough for a hat."

No thanks, we spent enough money buying the cheapest acrylic Michaels sells during the great Super Mario blanket project of 2010.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:39 AM on November 29, 2011

The wool/yarn thing really confused me when I saw knitting sites based outwith the UK. Though it's a weird semantic distinction - wool in a knitting sense is 'anything that comes in a ball', wool in a garment sense is 'fibres from a sheep'. I don't like acrylic clothing very much- I like to keep it natural, dude - and misleading garment description really irritates me. (Plus - £40 for an acrylic sweater?) I like merino, because it's smooth and agrees with my sensitive skin more than a lot of the scratchy acrylic-pretending-to-be-handknit-Fairisle that abounds in stores.

Bulgaroktonos - think yourself lucky you live in a country with access to Red Heart. Cheap (but not so cheap that it will shred on the hook) 4 ply acrylic here is £5 a ball.

I was wearing a long jumper yesterday made from a slightly fluffy yarn with a metallic element. I looked at the tag and noticed it was made from a mixture of nylon, angora, cashmere, cotton, lambswool, viscose and polyamide. This seemed like an awful lot of different types of materials for one yarn! I'm used to lambswool being mixed with a synthetic element (presumably for stretchability) or sweaters containing only a percentage of angora (presumably pure angora is very expensive to produce as a mass market garment, plus it would be very very fluffy) but whenever I check the labels of jumpers in shops there seems to be a similar long list of 'ingredients', even on garments that don't look like a 'special' yarn. Why is it then that yarn for handknitting (I'm trying hard not to type 'knitting wool') only has maybe three ingredients tops?
posted by mippy at 5:48 AM on November 29, 2011

FYI, bulgar, there are cheaper wool options; Knitpicks is just one. They're MUCH cheaper. (There are the fancy-poo brands of wool yarn, and the "cheap-and-cheerful" brands. The only discernible reason for the difference I can think of is how the yarn was dyed or whether the sheep were massaged daily or something.) A single skein would be enough for a hat, and that more typically is about $6-7 bucks; the $40 one was probably hand-dyed or something crazy.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:50 AM on November 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

Words mean what we use them to mean. In Britain, "wool" means yarn. Citing the history of the word does not change its current usage.... [Y]ou can't fight descriptivism.

I don't think the point being made was a prescriptivist point so much as it was that valuable information as to the qualities of the object is lost under the usage given. It's not a rule-based argument in favor of historical usage, it's a utility-based argument in favor of reducing legitimate confusion arising from ambituity.

If you tell me "ain't got no wool", I am perfectly happy to understand that you are out of wool, but I am unsure whether this means that my follow-up question, "got any acrylic yarn?" would be redundant or not.
posted by gauche at 5:52 AM on November 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

...ambiguity, even.
posted by gauche at 5:52 AM on November 29, 2011

I was expecting a lot more yarn snobbery. I've run into some very particular knitters who see upper scale yarns as a status symbol. You get folks that not only prefer wool, but only wish to knit with certain brands. I found out about Wollmeise during a ravelry swap and was shocked to see that skeins can go for over $80 on ebay. Yarn snobbery always struck me as silly (I'm happy with knitpicks and craft store yarn, thanks), but the site is asking for truth in advertising, which is not a bad thing.

Also, there's a French woman in my knitting group who also uses the term wool for all kinds of yarn. Perhaps its a European thing in general? Or maybe she learned it from English knitters. Hmm.
posted by JustKeepSwimming at 6:11 AM on November 29, 2011

Something Awful - Wool Fetish
posted by The Whelk at 6:13 AM on November 29, 2011

I don't know if it's a law, but in the States this doesn't happen. "Wool" means it comes from an animal. You might use a modifier if the animal isn't a sheep, i.e. "alpaca wool". If something is acrylic or viscose or cotton, generally the label says so, and so does the catalog.
posted by mneekadon at 8:18 AM on November 29 [+] [!]

The hell I say! This is an enormous country, and I work in a yarn shop. We get knitters of all ages from all over the ~~country~~ planet who use the word "wool" to refer to "something I want to knit with." And I've overheard this in my travels to California, Washington State, and Arkansas. So, it's not something about crossing into our crazy state that makes people...uh, crazy? It's similar to the Coke vs Pop vs Soda thing we have going on here, except I think those have been regionally cataloged. Good luck getting someone to take research into knitting (and/or crochet) seriously. I tried.

Drives me a lot less bonkers than some of the other things I hear at work. ("I will never buy wool, it's all itchy." or "I followed the instructions, this pattern is terrible because, look at this thing! It would fit around a house." or "the pattern calls for acrylic, so I'm doing a stripe of this one (acrylic worsted - gets 5 stitches or so in one inch on a size 8ish US needle) and a stripe of this one (sequined fingering weight, label suggests a US 4 needle to get 27 stitches in 4 inches) and then a stripe of this, but I ran out of this, can you tell me what this is? I need 5 more balls of it. And can you make sure the dye lots match?" This, of course, has been discontinued for 16 years and was purchased in Spain.

Re:yarn snobbery...in my behind the scenes position, I see some of it, but lots of super outspoken snobbery knitters are coming in and secretly buying Encore or are bringing me their projects made with Michaels Yarn to repair or instruct on. And some of the most down to earth types of knitters gravitate toward some more expensive stuff because they heard it mentioned somewhere and they genuinely like it. Very rarely does someone come into the place where I work with a rabid opinion about this thing they must have. Which I like. But remember, we are all human. So the bell curves of behaviors and quirks fit over us just like every other group. We may skew to the left or the right of the gen pop, but we sure do curve.
posted by bilabial at 6:20 AM on November 29, 2011 [7 favorites]

Link
posted by The Whelk at 6:20 AM on November 29, 2011

At least a couple of those do clearly contain cashmere or angora. So... the UK evidently says "wool" for yarn, does "wool" *not* apply there for non-sheep animal fibers?

It makes it sound like picking some serious nits, to me, even if the examples chosen would still be low percentages even if they were sheep.

I knit now and then but I really think you'd be hard pressed to say that most of those examples have anything to do with "this really means knitting yarn" kind of wool/not-wool confusion. But the argument feels weaker for leaving me imagining somebody fuming about how that cashmere sweater is totally 100% not-sheep OMG.
posted by gracedissolved at 6:24 AM on November 29, 2011

Wool is a good resource to have at start, but as soon as you can't realistically build settlements anymore, it's usually pointless to try to amass it unless you have the appropriate port. Of course, if you're stuck and can only guarantee victory through development cards, that's a different story.
posted by griphus at 6:26 AM on November 29, 2011 [14 favorites]

Brick is where it's at, my friend.
posted by gauche at 6:27 AM on November 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

While it's pretty much the most important resource during early- and middle-game, brick is even less useful than wool is at end-game. Grain, on the other hand, is the most versatile of the resources.
posted by griphus at 6:29 AM on November 29, 2011

Yes, but you can always kill one of your sheep to feed the family so you have more money to spend on WILD BOAR.
posted by mippy at 6:41 AM on November 29, 2011

Yeah, but if you've played your early-to-mid-game right, you have diversified enough that no single resource is an impediment to victory.
posted by gauche at 6:46 AM on November 29, 2011

This thread convinced me to buy wool (real wool, from actual sheep) for my Secret Quonsar recipient. (full disclosure--in addition to being a long-time MeFite, the owner of the linked wool shop is a friend)
posted by MrMoonPie at 6:46 AM on November 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Seen in a local knitting shop:

Keep Calm and Carry Yarn
posted by hardcode at 6:47 AM on November 29, 2011 [6 favorites]

Dearest Whelk,

links obviously NSFW

I¹ believe^1a we² have³ entered⁴ a game⁵ of⁶ one⁷ upsmanship⁸.

Now⁹ that¹⁰ we're¹¹ both¹² a little more freaked out, I ran out of patience, so I quit. Here's some sperm¹³.

1. Not one. Not two. Many.
1a. People so often suggest this as my project du jour when I am knitting a sock in public. My stock response has become, "bring me the man with a 12 inch cock that has a 90 degree bend in the center!"
2. Behold the tags on that. Yes, acrylic.
3. There is a baseball one, and a rainbow one, superman, an elephant
4. I don't know what to say about this.
5. I made a hat with this pattern for a Christmas present last year. Notice they're both Bucks.
6. Sometimes people just want to fuck like rabbits.
7. Sometimes you need a cozy for the other kind of rabbit.
8. Sometimes you want flesh tone.
9. I am in awe of White Lies Designs. Would totally make some of her designs for myself.
10. Even the unfortunate color of this one doesn't make the garment less sexy.
11. Dude, I like this one, but not for me to wear.
12. I feel obligated to point out that a woman designed this one.
13. They're crocheted, not knitted.

well. yes. I do have a paper due tonight. And a presentation to give. But at least I'm not knitting!
posted by bilabial at 6:57 AM on November 29, 2011 [9 favorites]

17th century English people called stuff yarn - like linen or flax yarn, wool yarn - before it was woven.
posted by jb at 6:58 AM on November 29, 2011

Bilabial and Whelk: you may be amused by this book. (Which I own and totally have used, and never you mind what project I made.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:02 AM on November 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Let's talk about wool, baby.
Let's talk about shearing sheep.
Let's talk about all the knit things
And the bits things
That may be.
Let's talk about wool.
Let's talk about wool.
posted by maryr at 7:29 AM on November 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

I know "false advertising" law is kind of a joke, but is it really legal to advertise something as wool that has no wool in it at all? What is the justification, that they are using "wool" by some other definition?

Could I go on eBay (let's say in NY) and post:

GOLD WATCH $200
This watch is plastic, but painted a gold color.
posted by Winnemac at 7:31 AM on November 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, Gold Tone would be OK, so perhaps they could use 'wool feel'?

I work in a job that involves looking into claims made by advertisers, and if something wasn't wool, they wouldn't be able to describe it as such. The same regulation doesn't extend to online shopping - and I think consumer ignorance plays a part, I've bought things from eBay that have been described as 'wool' and turned out to be acrylic, so I think maybe consumers and copywriters alike may not draw the distinction.
posted by mippy at 7:35 AM on November 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wovenmber is a silly name. I would like to propose Ovinber, a month to celebrate all things seep.

I am also bothered by those pictures of sheep marked "100% Wool." Because, for people so concerned about clear labeling, they are awful cavalier about the large percentage of each sheep that is meat, bones, skin, partially-digested plant matter, etc. If we are going to be picky, let's be nitpicky! WAKE UP WOOLEOPLE!
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:51 AM on November 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

I have similar problems looking for linen, which in addition to being a fiber, is also a synecdoche or something for household textiles and for a color. I hadn't noticed this with wool, but it seems to be a similar phenomenon, like 'wool' can be used to mean yarn or a heavy cloth fabric.

The fiber content is usually still labeled correctly, but it's confusing trying to make the distinction verbally or in internet searches where you can't specify the field you're searching on.

As frustrating as it is, I don't think it's quite on the level of false advertising as long as the labeling is accurate.

Still, I probably wouldn't shop at a store that regularly did this kind of thing, because it is annoying and still strikes me as sneaky and deceptive.
posted by ernielundquist at 7:54 AM on November 29, 2011

Of course, if you're stuck and can only guarantee victory through development cards, that's a different story.

Is there a joke about carding wool in there?
posted by Melismata at 8:14 AM on November 29, 2011

I was wondering whether this is anything to do with the proliferation of new artificial fabrics over the past few decades, which has led to (real) wool being one of many options, one that people may encounter less, and so it has gone from being a noun to being a vague adjective.
posted by carter at 8:20 AM on November 29, 2011

Knitters on Twitter have been working with wool and posting about it all month, and there have been some lovely reflections on the yarn and the work there. And I have been using Wovember as a half-baked excuse to amass more wool than normal. Pick up three fleeces at an auction? DON'T MIND IF I DO.

My favourite thing about real legitimate wool from sheep is the staggering variety available. One of my new fleeces is a cream-coloured one with a very soft and downy undercoat mixed with longer and silkier guardhairs—Icelandic lamb!—and I'll use it to spin fuzzy and lightweight and lofty yarn for lining mittens and hats. The undercoat provides the fuzz and the guardhairs help with maintaining the yarn's structural integrity. Another of the fleeces is mixed shades of grey and each lock is loosely wavy and about six inches long, and it's fine and lustrous and the sample I washed and spun is crisp without feeling hard, and it will make the longest-wearing sweaters known to man. The fibres are so long and uncrimpy that it's unlikely ever to pill much. Or I'll blend some of it with some of the Icelandic lamb fleece to make better yarn for socks. Another fleece is 8"-long shiny ringlets in dark dark grey and I'll spin it into fine yarn for knitting into lace scarves that block out huge and stay that way because the wool just wants to spread out and lie flat.

My partner is less excited because I have been monopolizing our biggest sink to wash the fleeces a bit at a time, but he'll cheer up when I present him with the best mittens ever.

SHEEP. ♥
posted by bewilderbeast at 8:46 AM on November 29, 2011 [7 favorites]

Also, Kate Davies is great. Look at how charming her designs are!
posted by bewilderbeast at 8:47 AM on November 29, 2011

I KNO RITE. I want to learn how to actually do a purl stitch so I can make the Owls sweater. Although it would cost me about £60 if I wanted to make it with the yarn suggested, so I'd want to be sure I'd be capable first, and I can't quite knit at all.
posted by mippy at 9:07 AM on November 29, 2011

I have a suspicion that the pricier wools start to make sense if you place a reasonable value on your time when hand-knitting, and you actually wear the final product long enough to see how quickly it pills up or falls apart, but as a non-knitter I could be totally wrong.

you are correct. I don't buy knitpicks yarn any more because in some cases, the garment I was knitting started to pill unacceptably before I was even finished knitting it.

Empress: (There are the fancy-poo brands of wool yarn, and the "cheap-and-cheerful" brands. The only discernible reason for the difference I can think of is how the yarn was dyed or whether the sheep were massaged daily or something.)

Some of the difference is in the dyeing; hand or specialty dyeing adds another layer of labor costs into the yarn. But some of it honestly is the wool. Knitpicks uses shorter fibers and a greater diversity of wool types in their yarn, which adds to the pilling problem. If all your wool fibers are the same length, then you can use an appropriate twist for the staple length to ensure that the fibers are fully bound within the singles without becoming hard and compacted. If they are many different lengths, then you either have some fibers overly twisted because they're longer, which makes your yarn hard and scratchier, or you have the shorter fibers not fully incorporated into the structure of the yarn, which leads to weakness and pilling.

The other reason Knitpicks is so cheap is because they have a complete vertical distribution in-house; they buy the wool from the shepherds, but then they do all the processing, spinning, dyeing, put-up, and sales themselves. That's a good model, though Knitpicks also has a history of using their gorilla status to try and stamp out competition even when the competition was there first.

All that having been said, I'd knit with KnitPicks wool before I'd knit with Red Heart acrylic. But either way, $350 in yarn for a sweater sounds outrageous until you realize I'm likely to be putting twice that many hours into the garment, and will end up with something that I love and that fits me perfectly. I knit all my own socks, and the yarn for those ranges from $15-$30 a pair, but they are simply incomparable to commercially available socks in every single way.
posted by KathrynT at 9:14 AM on November 29, 2011 [4 favorites]

"Something Awful - Wool Fetish"

is that like an itch you cannot scratch?
posted by eggtooth at 9:17 AM on November 29, 2011

Good movement, because "wool" should indicate "that yarn made of sheep hair that I've been proven to be allergic to" rather than "any yarn."

(if it's not synthetic or cotton, I'm not wearing it, don't even get me started on flax...it's in food, too, so gets to me BOTH ways)
posted by Electric Elf at 9:31 AM on November 29, 2011

is it really legal to advertise something as wool that has no wool in it at all? What is the justification, that they are using "wool" by some other definition?

Maybe just me talking, but I consider "wool" to be a style, not just a fabric. A "wool coat" with synthetic material designed to mimic wool is still a "wool coat."

That would likewise apply to the "wool stockings" cited.

They have to list the materials. What's the big whoop?
posted by mrgrimm at 9:32 AM on November 29, 2011

Well, as others have said, imagine a 'diamond pendant' that's actually made of cubic zirconia. If they state that, it's not a Trades Descriptions Act issue, but it's annoying, and if you want a diamond it's hard to find - especially if these in-the-style-of-diamonds are sold at the same price and on the same websites as the diamond stuff.

My personal pet peeve on this front? eBay sellers who sell 'vintage' items that turn out to be 'vaguely vintage looking things from Primark sold at a massive profit'. Yes, the information is there if you look for it, but the point is: you have to look for it. And meanwhile you have to sift through tons of stuff that is selling itself on something which it is not.

On an acrylic tip - I wish I could get Red Heart here. I want to start crocheting again when my skinwrongs have cleared up, and cheap acrylic is the best stuff for amigurumi, especially for a learner who doesn't want to spring for the 'nice' wool yet.
posted by mippy at 9:57 AM on November 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

OMG I clicked through to see the owl thing and have bookmarked it for future purchase. So cute!
posted by marginaliana at 10:00 AM on November 29, 2011

Oh! She of the owls sweater! I want to put that owl cable on everything sometimes. But then I remember that time I did a koolhaas hat and back away from the cables.
posted by dinty_moore at 9:12 AM on November 29 [+] [!]

The Owls sweater is MUCH easier than the Koolhaas hat. I have made two owls sweaters in record time but have had to start koolhaas multiple times. So do it, owl everything up, it's easy, I swear!!
posted by sadtomato at 10:14 AM on November 29, 2011

That's a good model, though Knitpicks also has a history of using their gorilla status to try and stamp out competition even when the competition was there first.

If it's any consolation, I think some of the other knitters in my group have all said that their interchangeable needles suck anyway.

I'm all over the place fiberwise anyway; most of my stash I got for free from a friend when she was moving house and didn't want to pack everything (I'd taught her how to knit and this was payback), so I've got everything from random acryllic to Noro (non-knitters -- this is a Japanese brand that's often a blend of wool plus a bunch of other things, and comes in some AMAZING colors) to Lamb's pride to a skein of Malabrogio here and there. I save the really good stuff for myself, Knitpicks and Lamb's Pride wools felt fantastically, and the acryllic is good for baby clothes and charity knitting. I think the last time I bought anything I based my selection on "what itches least of the wools".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:14 AM on November 29, 2011

How to add hours of fun to your knitting hobby: get a microscope. It is very educational to look at all kinds of yarns and loose fiber under the microscope. Natural fibers are very beautiful. Compare acrylic to cheap wool to alpaca and you will see where the feel, insulation, water resistance and ease of working comes from. Spray some water on different yarns ans knits and see how the water beads, gets rejected or gets trapped.

I spent a couple of months in a wol producing village in the mountains. I started with an armful of freshly sheared wool ans cleaned it, carded it, spun it, died with roots and wild plants in a clay pot over an open fire and made a hat. I suck at knitting, but I am a natural at going from dirty sheep hair to beautifully dyed yarn. And the lanolin makes your hands soft and happy even in dry freezing mountain weather.
posted by Ayn Rand and God at 10:36 AM on November 29, 2011 [6 favorites]

three blind mice: Your quote makes no sense in this context. The British are the ones with the wool problem here.
posted by zsazsa at 10:52 AM on November 29, 2011

Ooh, that's another reason to be thumbs-up for wool and thumbs-down for acryllic (she said, with an eye to the original topic) -- wool dyes beautifully with simple DIY ingredients. You can dye yarn, or a hand-knit sweater, with plain straight-up Kool-aid, or with the dye left over from if you color Easter Eggs. Wool also takes very well to dyes made from natural sources, like beet juice, tea, and onion skins (you may have to add a bit of a mordant, like alum, but that's fairly easy to find, and a little of that goes a long way).

So with a wool sweater, you can easily decide that "you know, I don't think I like this white sweater any more, I wish I had a pink one," and then go out and get a bunch of beets to make it happen rather than getting a new sweater. (I tried this -- a decent sized bunch of beets yielded enough color to dye two skeins of wool yarn this GORGEOUS salmony-pink color.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:55 AM on November 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

All I can say on this issue is that if my roommate brings more 100 % acryclic sweaters to me for inspection, saying, "OMG, just touch this, it's so soft!", I'm eventually going to break down and tell her what I really think.
posted by peacheater at 11:14 AM on November 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

I knit all my own socks, and the yarn for those ranges from $15-$30 a pair, but they are simply incomparable to commercially available socks in every single way.

I explain this to people (only if I must) by describing the hours of entertainment I get. Can't go to the movies for $1 an hour, can ya? Ok, sure you can get Netflix that cheaply. Whatever. What do you have at the end of your movie? Me, I'm 2 hours closer to a pair of socks. Stop asking how many pairs of socks I have. No, it's not enough pairs. Also, sometimes sock yarn goes on sale....sometimes.
posted by bilabial at 11:21 AM on November 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ooh, that's another reason to be thumbs-up for wool and thumbs-down for acryllic (she said, with an eye to the original topic) -- wool dyes beautifully with simple DIY ingredients.

Also, hand dyeing yarn/wool clothing is CRAZY fun.

It links me back to why I started knitting in the first place. I can make things. With my hands. Dyeing has the added benefit of a delightful mess. It's kinda like finger painting with a purpose.
posted by JustKeepSwimming at 11:41 AM on November 29, 2011

The Owls sweater is MUCH easier than the Koolhaas hat. I have made two owls sweaters in record time but have had to start koolhaas multiple times. So do it, owl everything up, it's easy, I swear!!

Oh, I understand that it will be easier. I just need time to get over the bad memories, still.
posted by dinty_moore at 12:12 PM on November 29, 2011

I only work with acrylic when making items that will take heavy use - cat toys, etc - otherwise I prefer natural fibres. If I bought some yarn thinking it was wool and it turned out to be acrylic I'd be very pissed off.

Lately I've been buying alpaca from local farms. It is more expensive and so I do fewer, more complicated projects with it. I love knowing that someone is going to get a gift from me where they can easily trace the whole process from the animal in the field to what they're wearing. It's just worth the extra money and like others have said upthread, when you're working on projects that can take 20 hours or more, spending $50 as opposed to $10 for supplies doesn't seem so terrible.
posted by Salmonberry at 12:17 PM on November 29, 2011

Check me out for being current (for once)! Crocheting a big ol scarf from wool and alpaca as we speak, with a giant sparkly crochet hook.
posted by Iteki at 12:47 PM on November 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Also, hand dyeing yarn/wool clothing is CRAZY fun.

And if you do it with stuff in your kitchen you can use things you'd throw away otherwise. (That bunch of beets going bad? Make a dye for a scarf! Got some leftover red wine that's turned? Dye a set of napkins with it! Made a lot of onion soup? Dye an old shirt with all the skins!)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:01 PM on November 29, 2011

Wool dyeing is lots of fun, something you can use to keep children and adults entertained indoors in a rainy winter day.

Get a bunch of natural wool, a little mordant and a bunch of pots of boiling water. Then try to dye the wool with everything you can find in the pantry and garden. You can get nice colors out of tea, coffee, hibiscus, kool-aid, flowers, bark, mustard, ketchup, etc... Many times the colors are completely unexpected, and the combinations more so. You dip the wool in something that dyes yellow, then in something that dyes blue, and instead of green you get purple.

You can finish up with a lecture on the history and science: How sepia, cochinille, indigo and other dyes fueled exploration and created empires. How the search for synthetic dyes jump-started modern chemistry and destroyed whole economies. How a kid with a chemistry set in a garage changed the world.

I got paid to do this, and I loved it. My project in the mountains had three parts:

The first one was to take samples of the different wool and natural mordants and dyes that the people have been using there for hundreds of years and to dye samples of wool using different ingredient proportions, combinations and boiling times. This resulted in a beautiful sampler with color ranging from very subtle earth and pastel tones to bright reds and deep browns.

The second part consisted of using imported (where imported means originating more than 200km from the village, the longest practical distance to travel in a day using existing transportation) mordants and dyes and comparing the performance to the traditional materials. My team ended up with a second sampler of very interesting colors, another team figured out the economics of the thing.

The third part consisted of figuring out what vegetable dyes could be grown in the village to expand their color palette, and if there were any plant, lichen or mineral dyes that the locals had not discovered yet. From this we got all kinds of weird results. Ugly colors, destroyed wool, oily wool and color changing wool. We got a really deep purple/pink that mutated to bile green after a couple of days of outdoor wear.
posted by Ayn Rand and God at 1:03 PM on November 29, 2011 [4 favorites]

(Hit post too soon. D'oh.)

I'm actually experimenting soon to see how well cranberries can dye wool -- my parents grow them, and I asked them to save me a bunch of the "junk" berries from this year's harvest to play with; all the ones from their own yield that were too overripe or dented or bruised. I've got about two pounds of the crap berries and a few skeins of yarn, and depending how well the yarn takes the dye, I may have myself the beginnings of a tiny cottage industry.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:04 PM on November 29, 2011

I explain this to people (only if I must) by describing the hours of entertainment I get. [...] What do you have at the end of your movie? Me, I'm 2 hours closer to a pair of socks.

I just started knitting 2 months ago, and I've been describing it as "advanced fidgeting", since I'm a horrible terrible fidget, always have been. Only now, I get something out of it! (So far: two small scarves and most of a third big one, a couple of pairs of fingerless mitts, and a french press cozy. I need to learn increasing and decreasing, etc, so I can expand what I can make.)

I did start with cheap acrylic: Vanna's Choice, for crying out loud, but quickly discovered that I like something that actually feels good while I'm working on it. Since really it's about the work in progress as much as the finished thing. Wool/acrylic blends seem to work well for me, balancing feel and price; best so far has been Cascade Yarns Pacific, I was actually sad when my scarf was done.

As a sweater-wearing person, I really prefer wool, particularly for cycling, although I almost always buy thrift store sweaters. I get sticker-shock looking at new wool sweaters.

In any case, it seems like the labeling thing isn't as much of an issue in the US, presumably in part because of the law that DU linked to.
posted by epersonae at 1:41 PM on November 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

It about broke my heart when someone hand-knitted me a sweater as a gift out of acrylic, which I find so uncomfortable to wear that I can't bear it for longer than 5 minutes. I never knew that people actively preferred acrylic to wool for reasons other than economy before this thread, but it does make sense I suppose. I have heard the complaint too itchy before, but I originally thought that was more an issue of the quality of the wool.

Depends on the acrylic. My great-grandmother crocheted some into her blankets that you could scrub pots with. But generally, I find acrylic less itchy than wool, if it's right against my skin. I don't know what it is - I don't itch from fine silk-wool blends, but I do itch from wool sweaters, particularly around the neck. Whereas the acrylic ones feel like cotton, only they don't get so clammy when it's damp.

And most of all - acrylic is washable. An acrylic sweater can be dragged outside, thrown on the ground, stuffed in the bottom of my bag - and when I want, I throw it in the washer and dryer and it's all nice again. Since I hate and thus never do my handwash, this is worth so much to me that I might even pay more for acrylic than for wool.
posted by jb at 2:37 PM on November 29, 2011

Indeed - I've been searching for a cable-knit. thick sweater for my SO, but failing to find it, because they are all wool or wool blends. He feels the same way about acrylic as I do, and he wants it to be...

100% Acrylic.
posted by jb at 2:40 PM on November 29, 2011

That owl cable pattern is adorable; I'll have to use it somewhere. And I just cast on for a Koolhaas hat—hopefully it won't be too bad. Cabling without a cable needle should help.

Perhaps it's because the knitting friends I have tend more toward the wool/alpaca/etc./spin-your-own-yarn side than the acrylic side or maybe it's being in the Pacific Northwest, but I've never heard wool as a generic term for yarn or used to refer to acrylic. But I'm all for truth in advertising as well as nice yarn (which doesn't have to be too expensive—I just picked up enough alpaca/silk yarn for a hat for $10).

Next up: figuring out what to do with a few pound of un-washed, un-carded, un-spun mohair from a friend of a friend's Angora goat flock. Time to learn some new skills.
posted by JiBB at 2:48 PM on November 29, 2011

Aaaaand, done.
posted by Iteki at 3:11 PM on November 29, 2011

Iteki: Pics or it didn't happen.
posted by Ayn Rand and God at 3:47 PM on November 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

I agree that Wovember is a bit of a silly and awkward name, but I'm glad to see it getting some attention. It's been very popular in my circle of knitting friends, but talking about the qualities of wool to most knitters is just preaching to the choir. Pleased to see it branching outside of the fiber arts community.

Maybe just me talking, but I consider "wool" to be a style, not just a fabric. A "wool coat" with synthetic material designed to mimic wool is still a "wool coat."

I disagree. Wool is not a style, it's a material. It doesn't matter how much they might resemble each other, stockings made from nylon are not 'silk stockings'. If you want to sell something that looks like wool, but is not wool, you should use some sort of term to make that clear, such as 'imitation wool coat' or 'wool-feel acrylic coat'.
posted by Gordafarin at 10:26 PM on November 29, 2011

Maybe just me talking, but I consider "wool" to be a style, not just a fabric. A "wool coat" with synthetic material designed to mimic wool is still a "wool coat.

How could wool imply a particular style? It can be knit, felted or woven like anything else. I think you are conflating knitwear with wool which is at best imprecise.
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:53 AM on November 30, 2011

Ayn Rand and God: pix! I think I am allergic to it tho!
posted by Iteki at 2:50 PM on November 30, 2011

bilabial: I unintentionally made a somewhat obscene-looking crocheted object when I decided the silliest thing I could do with yarn (for a contest on instructables.com) was to crochet a gun cozy. It ended up looking far more phallic than I expected.

My girlfriend is allergic to wool, so I made her a hat out of yarn that was a mix of alpaca and silk. Soft and warm and oh so nice.

tangentially related, alpacaaaaa.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:07 AM on December 2, 2011

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