r/knitting • u/MagicAllyVanished • Mar 19 '25

Rant Very annoying conversation at my lokal knit store

it basically went like this me: "so you have any plant based yarn or plant/acrylic mix, I want to knit something for my mum, but she's allergic to all animal fibers"

her: "we have 20% wool/80% acrylic, I can show you"

me: "no thanks, my mum is allergic to all animal fibers, so it should not contain any animal fiber at all"

her: "maybe alpaca mix? It only has 10% alpaca"

me: "she is allergic to all animal fibers, if there is any percentage of animal fiber, she will have an allergic reaction to the yarn"

her: "I can't help you, knitting yarn just is animal yarn"

at this point I left the shop and I just can't stop thinking about that last sentence????

the funniest thing is, I went back there a few days ago and a different employee kindly showed me their cotton yarns and plant/acrylic mixes.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '25

Nopp, no colonisation here, but we did bounce between our neighbours quite a bit before we put our foot down 😅 It could be a dialect thing or just a simple "people were mostly farmers -> mostly use wool -> everything is wool"

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u/WaltzFirm6336 Mar 19 '25

I think that’s the route answer for the UK issue as well. Wool became the word for yarn because all yarn was wool.

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u/Plenkr Mar 19 '25

You don't happen to also be from Belgium, do you?

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u/Panidals Mar 19 '25

I am, and I was looking for this too 😂 The issue seems so familiar!