Acrylic

This time of year, Back to School immediately comes to mind as a blog post topic. I thought about writing one, began composing it in my head while driving back and forth to the farm, but realized the only people happy to see back to school are the parents of children young enough to have to pay for childcare in the summer.  For the rest of us, teachers included, back to school is a depressing, somewhat expensive and possibly sad especially if you’re sending a kid back to college.  I know, kindergarten teachers are skipping off to meet their new cherubs, glitter in one hand, paint in the other, but jaded high school teachers are contemplating the end of freedom just like those kids who belong to the names on our new rosters.

So I didn’t write that post.

Instead, inspired by @caithnesscraft’s Craft Room 101 experiment, I wrote this post.  I’ve also been listening to Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain, so my natural snarkiness may seem a bit much even for me.  However, it would do us all a bit of good to channel a little Tony Bourdain once in awhile, and this is a topic that merits Bourdain’s no holds barred style.

In the same way a teacher gets pilloried for dropping an F-bomb, woe be the knitter who utters the word “acrylic”.  When I mentioned to @RobinUlrich that I was planning a blog post in defense of acrylic, she responded, “Depends on what you’re using it for.”  That, readers, is the core of my defense.  Acrylic has it’s place in the knitting world.  Here are 4 very good reasons to reach for acrylic:

1. You just learned to knit.  I learned to knit back in January so I’m still a beginner.  For my very first class, I chose a Loops and Threads yarn from Michaels that all my students thought was very me.  Not only were they right based on color, but it was the perfect yarn for those first knit stitches.  I ripped that scarf out over and over and that yarn sure took a beating, but it didn’t complain as I finally finished a seriously sad piece of knitting.  Not based on the materials, but on the skillset of the knitter.  Beginners can stroll through the virtual aisles of gorgeous yarn on etsy, but we’re better off making purchases from the actual aisles in Michael’s and A C Moore.
2. My kids are nearly grown but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember what it was like to have little ones.  My daughter needed at least one change of clothes per day until she entered preschool (and even then, 4 days out of 7 I changed a least one article of clothing on her by the end of the day).  Kids get dirty.  It’s their job.  If I knit a sweater for my daughter way back when out of some artisan dyed alpaca mohair blend the poor kid would never have had a chance to wear it because her mom would be too stressed out it would be damaged.  Kids and acrylic go together like peanut butter and jelly, and when that peanut butter and jelly get smeared across the front of that sweater, no big deal, acrylic is forgiving.
3. That brings me to economy.  Kids grow.  I also have a boy, and boys grow overnight.  That $20 a hank madelinetosh yarn may be a beautiful green that would look perfect on my son with his blonde hair, but by the time I got it done, he’d probably be too big for it.  Not to leave anyone out, parents aren’t the only ones economizing these days either.  As a teacher in New Jersey, my salary is falling not rising thanks to our governor’s impression that teachers have been living the high life all these years.  Yes, my stash of Red Heart, Lion Brand, and Patons just screams of fat paychecks and overindulgence.  This isn’t the go-go 80’s (when acrylic was king), the tech boom of the 90s, or 2006.  Last week, 409,000 people claimed unemployment for the first time in the US, and 9.1 % of our population is unemployed.  Hobbies are great for mental health but when you’re unemployed, the boost you need won’t come from that Fiberspates Scrumptous shipped all the way from the UK.  When times are tough, acrylic is your friend.
4. When my Dad discovered I was knitting, he was thrilled.  I realize that sounds odd to most people; my 71 year old Dad excited about my knitting?  Those who’ve read this blog for awhile know that my grandmother (his mother) was an avid left handed knitter all her life.  It was my limitation that I could never quite get how to knit from her instructions, but I never gave up on the desire to knit.  My Dad turns 72 next month, and what does he want? A scarf and hat knitted in Steelers colors just like the ones his mom used to make, and wouldn’t you know, Lion Brand makes a “Pittsburgh Yellow” acrylic yarn.  He plans to wear this bit of nostalgia in Dallas where my parents have lived for over 20 years (and you need a scarf 5 days out of the year), but he was born and raised as I was in western Pennsylvania where the Steelers are first, last, and always.

Acrylic will always have its naysayers, just like some people will always believe Kobe beef is somehow less likely to contain e. coli and entrails than the hamburger you just bought your kid at McDonalds.  OK, that was Bourdain speaking and not this vegan, who recognizes that using acrylic could be a way to remove animals from the knitting equation and read those articles revealing how bad acrylic may be for the environment.  I don’t know the answer to that one although I do know that if everyone treats the producers of natural fiber they way Tom the Shepard does, acrylic has some real competition in ecological terms.

That said, I say we keep acrylic in our craft room.  It may not be good for every project, but for beginning knitters, projects for kids, economical stash choices, and plain old nostalgia, you can’t go wrong with acrylic!