Tuesday 6 December 2011

Spinning Stuff.

I'm delving into the Spinning Experiment data again, this time with a slightly different angle, and I've been reading a lot of spinning pages and how-to-do's and how to design your own yarn stuff yesterday. It's really interesting, and I get the feeling it's really different, goal-wise, from how historical yarns were spun.

Now if I could only find out why. Why is soft yarn seen as so wonderful today, even if it doesn't stand up well against abrasions? Is this our throwaway society? Or general wimpyness? Or different aesthetics? Hard to tell, unfortunately...

1 comment:

Alison said...

Touched a 'soft' spot for me here, I think... I have a few theories:
1) Because everyone knows wool is scratchy, so we must disprove that!
2) Because no-one wears a sweater for more than a season or two, so what does durability matter?
3) Because luxury is more important than practicality;
4) Because we are spinning and then knitting (or weaving, but I think more often knitting) as a hobby, and we only need a certain number of sweaters before the wardrobe explodes;
5) Because a lot of today's spinners don't actually think about the finished product when they spin. They want to make 'lovely yarn', not a lovely sweater...

I'm sure I could go on, but ranting is rude, right?