Why is knitting and crocheting only associated with older women?

Because people nowadays are incapable of critical thinking.

Until about the 1980s, fibre crafts – knitting, crochet, weaving – were part of the curriculum in primary schools around the world. Boys learned, as well as girls. Many would have learned to card and spin fleece at home from an early age. Unfortunately, this practice disappeared in many countries. The last people to have gone through it are middle-aged, 40s+. Some are amongst the recent resurgence of interest in the fibre arts.

With the disappearance of fibre crafts from schools, so too did the simple knowledge that “older women” knit and crochet because they – and their brothers – learned to knit and crochet as very young children.

I am, I believe, not yet an “old” woman at 52, 53 later this year. I have been knitting for 48–49 years, and crocheting for 47–48 years.

The few remaining critical thinkers among you will have observed from the above that I have been knitting and crocheting since I was a very young child. Not an “older woman”.

Moreover, I was taught to knit by my 30-something FATHER. Not an “older woman”.

Look at the size of those hands. His wedding ring was the size of a toddler’s bracelet.

He taught me to knit AFTER teaching my younger brother, also not an “older woman”.

My uncle Victor, of whom I have written occasionally, was a mining engineer who began his career in the 1950s. At the time, there was a great push to explore uninhabited regions of the world for possibly useful minerals. Uncle Victor travelled to places that no human had ever set foot in, and certainly no Westerner. Having lived in some of the most inhospitable regions on the planet – places of extreme cold, heat, humidity, and low-oxygen environments – he was one of a number of people invited by NASA in the 1960s to consult on and provide physiologuical data for the Apollo program. He met Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong when they were mere hopefuls.

Why do I mention this? Well, Uncle Victor’s amazing career was made possible not by his academic knowledge of mining engineering and geology, or his experience. It was made possible because he knew how to knit, sew, and cook from childhood. He didn’t need to rely on a woman or an extensive support network to sew on his buttons, darn his socks, or make his dinner, so his employers could send him into regions where there were no women or support networks.

Quora linky.

Will cotton wool shrink up at all when I wash it?

Cotton yarn expands when washed. It lacks the little scales that wool has, which can interlock causing shrinkage. So that fitted cotton sweater you bought will most likely become a baggy sweater after the first wash.

A blend of cotton and wool will, on balance, retain its shape – the cotton expanding and the wool shrinking should cancel each other out, although a lot depends on the relative composition.

Cotton wool pads – the kind of thing you take your makeup off with – will appear to shrink, but that’s only because they’re floofed up with air in the package. As soon as they get damp – with water or makeup remover – the air gets removed, and you get a flat pad of cotton.

Quora linky.

If a sweater is 100% wool, how do you wash it?

Firstly, you need to know that wool garments do NOT need to be washed often. Hang them outside or beside an open window for a few hours after wearing – that’s all that’s needed mostly. Really: wool wicks off sweat and kills the BO bugs. Soiling can be scraped off carefully when dry, then shake out the garment and put it straight back on. For those particularly nasty stains, like red wine or tomato sauce, most can be soaked off on a very soapy solution followed if necessary with a rinse in a white vinegar solution. If any staining remains, you can reduce its visibility by gently plucking out some of the stained fibres. Never, ever use bleach on wool: it causes wool to melt and disappear.

So. Given that you only need to clean that pure wool suit or sweater every other month, you could consider getting it professionally cleaned. If, like me, even this small splurge sets your Scottish ancestors birling out of their graves to wail and groan at you of a night, you can hand-wash it on cool-ish water with a suitable wool washing agent (okay, okay Great-uncle Hamish, back in your box) or the cheapskate option, shampoo – for dry hair if possible. If your deceased Irish granny is giving you nocturnal earache about how she didn’t work three jobs to scrimp and save so that her grandchildren could wash their clothes by hand, you could use the wool programme on your washing machine. Again: really. Mine have survived front-loaders and top-loaders.

Then, the issue is the drying thereof. Unless the wool is “superwash” – it should say on the label – no tumble driers. Instead, roll the garment in a bath towel and squeeze, don’t wring the excess water out. Lay it out flat and pulled into shape and leave it somewhere airy and/or warm (but not in direct sunlight, or close to a heat source).

Quora linky.

Why do we use sheep wool?

Because painting ourselves blue turned out to be a tad redundant?

Because somewhere along the route out of Africa, we figured out that wearing skins meant a dead animal who couldn’t provide us with milk, whereas wearing fleece meant a living animal AND more baby animals who could provide fleece and milk?

Because it’s insulating, waterproof, fireproof, and easy to manipulate into textiles?

Because a renewable resource is better than polluting the planet with plastic fibres derived from non-renewable fossil fuels?

Quora linky.

What is the natural purpose of lanolin in sheep’s wool?

Like the grease in your hair, it’s there to lubricate and condition the hair (kemp) and undercoat, thereby keeping it soft, smooth, and damage-free.

Unlike us, the sheep does not strip off its natural moisturiser with harsh soaps and shampoos, and therefore does not suffer from frizz, fly-aways and split ends, therefore (again unlike us) they don’t need to re-grease their hair with oily conditioners, masks and serums and styling products, which often contain lanolin (or a near-identical chemical) as the moisturising agent.

However, some sheep do get the full salon treatment for shows:

Because they’re worth it.

What’s your favorite non-wool yarn when knitting for folks who are allergic?

Most people who claim to be allergic to wool have simply been wearing (or were forced to wear) wool that is not fit for purpose.

Wool comes in many qualities, from soft enough for baby skin (e.g., most merino, Blue-faced Leicester, Wensleydale) to fire- and chemical-resistant industrial carpeting. Historically, people wore underwear in the softer wools,

Model wearing an Aran bodysuit and a tasseled stole in a super-bulky weight yarn

and outerwear in progressively rougher wool, up to Melton fulled twill for weather-resistant coats. Even then, there were differences: trousers or skirts for indoor wear were typically in softer wool, and usually worsted-spun*; outdoor clothing was more usually in sturdier, coarser wools, often blended with mohair, woollen-spun*, and ideally should be lined if you’re not wearing your merino long-johns or cotton petticoat underneath.

In addition, a lot of these ‘wool allergies’ come from a time when wool blends became A Thing because (1) the wool industry was going into decline and (2) more people had washing machines and wanted to wash their woollens in them. So your granny couldn’t afford the quality wool when she was knitting your school jumpers, and used a crappy wool blend with scratchy plastic in it, the washing machine battered the crap out of it, part-felted it á la Melton – and you blamed the wool.

So, the simplest solution for people who find wool scratchy – apart from buying better-quality woollen goods – is to wear something else next to the skin, such as a shirt under Granny’s Christmas sweater that she knitted specially for you with her crippled, arthritic hands, you ungrateful brat. Or you can try ‘superwash’ wool, which has the sticky-outy scales on each fibre chemically stripped off, which means it won’t felt, and isn’t (as) scratchy.

However some people are allergic to lanolin, the natural grease in wool. This is a pretty serious issue, as lanolin is the skin-softening ingredient in many lotions and moisturisers, and finds its way into soaps and makeup too.

To my knowledge, only sheep’s wool contains lanolin. That leaves a huge range of yarns available – note, I say ‘yarn’. Wool comes from sheep, yarn comes from everything else. You can choose from –

  1. Animal
    1. Angora:
      1. English
      2. French
      3. German
      4. Giant
      5. Satin
    2. Camellid:
      1. Alpaca
      2. Huacaya Alpaca
      3. Suri Alpaca
      4. Camel
      5. Guanaco
      6. Llama
      7. Paco-vicuña cross
      8. Vicuña
    3. Cervid:
      1. Cashgora (Cashmere-Angora cross)
      2. Cashmere goat
      3. Mohair
      4. Nigora cross
      5. PCA (Pygmy-Cashmere cross)
      6. Pygora (Pygmy-Angora cross)
    4. Silk:
      1. Bombyx / Cultivated / Mulberry
      2. Eri (Peace Silk)
      3. Muga
      4. Tussah
    5. Other:
      1. Arctic Fox
      2. Bison
      3. Cat
      4. Chinchilla
      5. Dog
      6. Highland Cattle
      7. Horse
      8. Mink
      9. Musk Ox / Qiviut
      10. Possum
      11. Reindeer
      12. Wolf
      13. Yak
  2. Plant
    1. Cellulose:
      1. Bast Bamboo
      2. Flax (linen)
      3. Hemp
      4. Nettle
      5. Paper
      6. Ramie
    2. Cotton:
      1. Acala / Upland
      2. Egyptian
      3. Naturally Colored Cotton
      4. Pima
  3. Manufactured:
    1. Acrylic
    2. Angelina
    3. Carbonized Bamboo
    4. Corn (Ingeo)
    5. Chitin
    6. Microfiber
    7. Milk (Casein)
    8. Nylon / Polyamide
    9. Pearl
    10. Polyester
    11. Rayon / Viscose
    12. Rayon from Bamboo
    13. Rayon from Banana
    14. Rose
    15. Seaweed/SeaCell
    16. Silver
    17. Soy Silk
    18. Stainless Steel
    19. Sugar Cane
    20. Tencel / Lyocell

Full disclosure: I haven’t tried all of these.

Of those I have tried, I would recommend the following as a substitute for wool:

  • Alpaca – any;
  • Cashmere;
  • Muskox/Qivuit for next to skin softness;
  • Angora – if and only if you aren’t afflicted with the scratchies. Angora is incredibly soft, but fuzzy and therefore tickly;
  • Bamboo bast or rayon – suitable for baby-soft skin;
  • Pima cotton – even though it dries the hands out as a knitting yarn;
  • Banana or soy silk – baby-soft;
  • Milk or milk and cotton blends;
  • Sugarcane;
  • High-quality acrylic, if you absolutely, positively must. It fills the seas with plastic micro-fibres, so think long and hard before you spend (serious, like cashmere-serious) money on this.

Of these, in terms of value for money, I’d go for alpaca, bamboo and cotton, in that order.

* – Worsted spinning sees the wool combed before spinning, so that all the individual fibres are parallel. It produces smooth, non-fuzzy yarn which weaves to a superior fine fabric. Woollen-spun yarns are simply carded without combing: the fibres are higgledy-piggledy and produces a fluffy, round yarn which is wonderfully warm – one example being Melton fabric, used for coats and blankets. While woollen-spun fibres are popular with handknitters, and worsted-spun with weavers, it is possible to use woollen-spun in weaving and worsted-spun in knitting.

Quora linky.

Why do clothes made from cotton feel softer than those made from wool?

Because you’re weak and soft.

Wool comes in hundreds of different qualities, some suitable for next to the skin, others better suited to outerwear. For thousands of years, people wore wool – either as fabric or fleece – from swaddling to shroud, with none of this crybabying about thquatching their thoft dewicate thkin. You got used to it, or you scratched.

Nowadays, people haven’t the skill or knowledge to select the right quality of wool for the purpose, and are too precious to give themselves time to get used to wool. They pronounce themselves ‘allergic’ (only a very tiny proportion are allergic to wool; ETA: Claire Jordan reminds me that more people are allergic to lanolin, the oil in sheep’s wool – that one is nasty), and never wear wool again.

Here’s an experiment. Grab a cotton wool ball or a face flannel, and scrub it, dry, over your skin. Or actually look when you’re towelling off after a bath. They all scrape your skin. In the case of the towel, you might well see what looks like dandruff flaking off your body as you dry. You’ll probably need to slap on a load of moisturiser, because the cotton strips the oils off your skin as well, adding to the flakiness.

The only reason cotton “feels” soft, is because the specific cotton fabric in your clothes has been chemically and mechanically treated to feel soft. Untreated cotton sandpapers the top layer of your skin off.

Quora linky.

What crafts would you recommend for a woman who has had to stop crocheting due to arthritis in the hands?

I’d keep crocheting, to be honest. Needlecrafts are to be recommended for pain management: many people with arthritis and other hand pain report considerable relief from pain due to knitting or crochet.

It might be worth investigating different hooks. Some people with arthritis find simply switching from metal hooks to wood or bamboo is enough. There are many ergonomic hooks on the market today which some people swear by. One example is Knit Picks Amour hooks, which have a contoured rubber handle, and are available in large (wool) and steel (lace) sizes. These are great if you normally hold the hook in a knife hold. If you’re a pencil-hold crocheter, you might be better with Addi’s basic grip hooks, which have a thicker pen-like handle that doesn’t need the tight grip of basic metal hooks. I’ve also heard good things about Furls hooks, but can’t comment myself.

Alternatively, you can purchase ergonomic handles for the hooks you already have. The Eleggant hook and handle set is recommended for hand therapy. There’s also the Boye Crochet Dude handle:

Some crocheters even craft their own ‘perfect’ handles using Fimo, Sculpey, resin, etc (a possible crafting substitute – and income stream!). I’ve also heard of people using pen grips!

If crochet is genuinely beyond you now, you might consider weaving – shuttles being substantially larger than hooks – needle-felting, or nuno felting:

Or a combination of all three. A fibre artist friend of mine produces some true works of art this way, incorporating fleece, wool, silk, bark and found objects into her tapestries.

Quora linky.

Is it better to live a day as a lion than 100 days as a sheep?

This is one of these grand, aspirational sayings that makes fuck all sense when you get into it.

Half of all lion cubs die. At least a quarter are killed by incoming males taking over the pride. Lionesses sometimes kill other lionesses’ cubs. Others die of starvation, neglect, and predation. Occasionally, lionesses get killed by incoming males, or when venturing accidentally into another pride’s territory. A male lion gets kicked out of his pride on adulthood. Thereafter, he’s fair game for any male protecting a pride. The main cause of death of adult males is other males. If a lion survives long enough to take a pride from a weaker or older male, he faces a short, brutal life of fighting off potential successors – or worse, coalitions of young adult males. And if he does manage to reach some great age? Some fat fuck from Texas will have him drugged so he can shoot him for a trophy.

In between, it’s hunting and sleeping. Mostly sleeping. And a lot of starving.

Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of lambs – even in the wild – survive to adulthood. There’s much less of this murderous nonsense between rams. They live in friendly social groups, and don’t mind new members. Munching delicious grass and sometimes seaweed, hopping around on rocks and cliff faces, and even trees, making friends with the other animals,

and getting haircuts and mani-pedis from the hoomans.

Which would you prefer?

Quora linky.

How do you select wool (-blended) socks from a mix with cotton socks quickly, but not by burning (just by smell, sound, taste, texture-touch, moistness etc.)?

Pluck off a quantity of the fuzz, and put it in bleach. If it’s wool-only, or blended with silk or oil-based synthetics, the fuzz will completely disappear. If there’s some trace fibre left, it’s blended with a plant-based fibre.

I find wool-cotton blends to be rather heavy compared to pure wool or other wool blends, and they feel cooler to the touch. YMMV.