Yarn Snobbery

A few months ago, I watched a video called Fiber Classism and Acrylic Love by Sara of Yarn Lab Canada podcast and the sentiment really hit home.  I agree with a lot of what Sara says in the video and it made me look at myself as a knitter and my part in the community.  I think most knitters start out with acrylic yarn and plastic needles.  I know I did, and for the longest time, that was okay.  In fact, I often questioned why anyone would spend so much money on wool yarn when the acrylic was just fine.  Then, about a year and a half ago, I fell into the world of knitting podcasts and realized there was a whole other world out there beyond the acrylic yarns from Michaels.  Thus began my purchasing and subsequent stashing of many different yarns.  My stash has only continued to grow as I discover new indie dyers or new yarn companies and decide that I must have another skein of speckled fingering weight yarn even though I have absolutely no plan on what to make with it.  Watching Sara’s video helped me realize that I was being a bit of a yarn snob.  Not exactly in the way she’d experienced, but I could see some snobbery in myself.  I never really paid all that much attention to what other people are knitting with, all that I really care about is if the yarn is pretty.  And it just so happened that all the pretty yarns I was seeing on various podcasts were wool yarns (or mostly wool yarns).  But the sort of lying by omission point Sara brought up was a good one.  Maybe some of the knitting podcasts I’d been watching do use acrylic yarn but if they don’t share, then I don’t know about it, and therefore I won’t be going out and purchasing - or even think about purchasing - acrylic yarn.  And I realized that I didn't want to be part of that cycle.  There's nothing wrong with acrylic yarns and I know some people may even prefer acrylic for a number of reasons.  So here are some of my acrylic projects!

Ever since watching that video, I’ve been more aware of my yarn choices and have even gone out of my way to purchase some 100% acrylic yarns.  I'm currently knitting the Uhlan Cap by Franklin Habit for my dad's birthday.  Here's the picture from the pattern page:

 As you can see, this piece will be touching a lot of skin.  I therefore wanted a yarn that was super washable and comfortable to wear.  No itchy wool here!  My dad ice fishes often in the winter and I know from packing up the gear, hiking out to the middle of the lake, and then hand drilling all the holes, one can get pretty warm out there and the hat may very well get pretty sweaty.  The fact that I'm sure this project will need to be washed a dozen or so times during the fall/winter further pushed me toward acrylic.  In the end, I decided on Cascade Yarns Sateen Worsted.  It seems to be knitting up just fine, very soft fabric and since most of the head part of the project is in Stockinette Stitch, it should keep the wearer warm.  

Another project that just makes a lot of sense to be made out of acrylic are socks!  During the Webs Anniversary Sale, I purchased a number of skeins of sock yarn (to encourage me to finish the 2016 Box o' Sox KAL) and I made sure that one of them was 100% acrylic.  Now, I only use sock yarns that have at least a little nylon in them since I know I'm hard on my socks and I want them to last as long as possible, especially when I'm giving them as gifts.  The yarn I picked was Berroco Comfort Sock.  It is 50% super fine nylon and 50% super find acrylic.  I just caked it up today and was hoping to cast on some socks tonight (once I pick a pattern - I'm a little sick of vanilla socks).  So far, it seems very soft and I can't really tell a difference between that yarn and the Knit One Crochet Too Ty-Dy Socks Dots yarn. 

My final (for now) acrylic project is an on-going one.  I'm slowly knitting and crocheting blankets for the local animal shelter.  I have a pretty good size collection of acrylic scraps and figured what better way to try and use them up than by making a bunch of little blankets.  And I know no little kitties will care if the color combos are a little funny. 

 Pile of blankets

 Bag full of partial skeins

So those are my current acrylic projects and I think I'll be trying out more acrylic yarns in the future - I know there are some really good ones out there. 

One thing that really pushed me to finally put all this together today was this Instagram post from WeAreKnitters:

Now, to be fair, it does have the caption: We'd be scared too #justjoking #nooffense

I'd highly recommend taking a quick scroll through the comments - it gets heated pretty quickly.  I just wanted to bring this up because while it doesn't seem like this topic comes up that often (at least it doesn't in the yarn/knitting circles I run in), when it does come up people are invested in the conversation. 

Here are some other instances from the video and comments section (video and Instagram) for when acrylic might actually be a better fit than wool:

• Vegan/animal welfare
•  Baby items - because babies are messy 
• Gifts for non-fiber friendly people.  If they won't know how to care for wool, then the 100% merino wool hat  you made them won't last very long.
• Allergies
• High durability wear – socks, children’s clothes, etc
• Financial  - not everyone has 300.00 to drop on a sweater quantity of yarn 
• Availability – not everyone has LYS, but many have access to Walmart, Michaels, or similar big box stores
• Toys 

Happy knitting with whatever fiber you prefer!