adrian_turtle | Fibers

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I am considering using a peg loom, as I have not done since 1977. The person lending it to me speaks of ergonomic hooks, and said I should remind her to give me some thick wool, because the wool in the donation box is too thin for a beginner. It didn't occur to me for quite some time that she could possibly have meant wool from a sheep. Obviously you give a beginner some kind of synthetic. Especially when the idea is to make hats to give away to people who might be allergic to wool.

I sort of expect that in casual usage, yarn for knitting is called wool, thread for sewing is called cotton, and the special thread for embroidering is called silk. Is this standard? Regional? Generational? I thought people who actually did fiber crafts would be more specific, but this is somebody who is quite deliberately inviting people who can't knit to join the knitting group, so who knows.

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From:

evalerie

To me the words are "thread" for sewing, and "embroidery thread" or "embroidery floss" for embroidering. I have not heard thread called "cotton" or embroidery thread called "silk." I grew up calling yarn "yarn," but have heard people call it "wool" regardless of what it was made of.

I think of synthetic yarn as being much cheaper than natural fiber, so you give it to children and beginners as an easy way to get started, especially if it's a teacher or scout leader starting a whole roomful of kids at once. Good yarn might break the bank.

I crochet hats from synthetic fiber because it is readily available and it makes warm hats.

For anything that touches the rest of my body, I aim for cotton, because I react badly to nylon and sometimes to other synthetics. Wool is okay, but I don't love it.

My local thrift store often has oodles of odd lengths of yarn, often for 25 cents. When I was a Girl Scout leader, it was a great source of yarn for projects. We never taught the kids to knit or crochet, though.

Only tangentially related: One of my son's caregivers is teaching another one to knit. When my son has downtime, I'll walk into the living room and find the two caregivers sitting in the living room, companionably knitting together. A third one crochets when she is here. I think this is very cool!

From:

adrian_turtle

The objective here is to knit or crochet lots of warm hats in whatever colors are handy and give them to the homeless shelter. It used to be a social thing where people gathered at the library (because you can talk and knit once you know what you're doing), and now they do it on zoom.