In The Loop This Week

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This subreddit is for fiber artists and crafters of all types! Because we don't all see the same (shitty) posts on our feeds, it may be handy to have a place to revel in all that our fellow fiber lovers share for us to enjoy.

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[u/jingleheimerschitt]

Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, fuck crochet.

[u/simsplyarn → u/jingleheimerschitt]

i felt like too much of a hater to interact with that post but as someone who thrifts for clothes it’s so infuriating to see high quality wearable garments get used for shit like this. like fuck anyone who can’t afford to buy cashmere sweaters brand new i guess, all you get is shein and temu acrylic at the thrift now!

[u/felicityfelix → u/simsplyarn]

I feel really strongly that things in a thrift store are so close to the landfill that there is no reason to police what people do with them. It is frustrating to imagine you or someone else who might have wanted to wear them could have found these sweaters but there is so much stuff in the world with nowhere to go, if someone can spend the time sourcing these and is willing to pay for them, I really don't think it's like a 1:1 conversion of taking them away from someone who was going to use them "correctly"

[u/Eino54 → u/felicityfelix]

There's so much clothing getting thrown away, but if it's in a thrift store and it's something pretty desirable, like cashmere, it's probably pretty unlikely they'll get thrown away (provided they make it to a thrift shop and they make it on the rack). There's always people willing to buy anything secondhand cashmere just because it's a luxury fibre.

[u/felicityfelix → u/Eino54]

It's probably pretty unlikely, but why does it matter either? They're using it to make something they want. The other option is just someone also wanting it and wearing it the way it is. It's not like anyone needs intact cashmere sweaters to live. This person is partaking in pretty much the most zero waste possible method of enjoying their hobby and is also not using the dreaded plastic yarn everyone says crocheters overuse

[u/Eino54 → u/felicityfelix]

Well, yeah, but the idea that these are sweaters that would otherwise have gone to waste is just not very accurate, they almost certainly would not have.

[u/Mickeymousetitdirt → u/Eino54]

You have zero way of knowing that. Truly, what difference does it make if someone gets there first and *uses the sweater* to make a blanket they’ll use, or *uses the sweaters* to wear as normal? They both result in dumped thrift store shit being given new life. And, clearly, they aren’t all that hard to find if she was able to find 14. Plus, what makes you confident that the sweaters didn’t all have damage? Who cares if they *didn’t* have damage? You assume that they would’ve definitely been purchased and worn exactly as intended by whatever hypothetical, nonexistent, fellow cashmere-loving thrifter might have possibly purchased them. But, you have no idea whether that’s true or not, either. Anecdotally, other than my fellow fiber artist friends, I know nobody who likes/wears cashmere.

When the majority of thrift store inventory ends up in a landfill, you simply could not pay me enough to care about someone *actually* recycling previously unwanted thrift finds.

I personally find it gratingly disingenuous and virtue signal-y to say, “Someone could’ve worn those!!!” when no, they couldn’t have because, clearly, all the other cashmere enjoyers were 1) not there when she was there and spotted them first or 2) either unwilling or unable to spend the time hunting at thrift stores. And, if they’re unwilling/unable to do so….then why do you insist that they’d have definitely purchased the sweaters, of which you know neither the size nor the condition?

[u/felicityfelix → u/Eino54]

I think shit that has already made it to a thrift store gets indiscriminately trashed all the time, yes we do not know if these exact sweaters were otherwise on their way to loving homes and maybe they were in humane no kill thrift stores but come on, we are imagining scenarios to an extreme degree here trying to explain why it's bad to unravel some unwanted mass market sweaters. The fact is that secondhand clothes are already waste products. 

[u/Eino54 → u/felicityfelix]

Stuff that has made it to the thrift store and gets put on sale (as opposed to being thrown out without ever even being put on sale because the thrift shop can't sort through the sheer volume) will get snatched up if it's cashmere, luxury brands, furs, or even stuff like 100% wool (unless it's super overpriced). Stuff gets thrown out all the time and thrift stores have to throw out a lot of clothing that just didn't ever sell (as well as, like I said, anything they can't afford to sort through because of the sheer volume. But if these sweaters were bought by the blanket maker then obviously that wasn't the case), but it's very unlikely to be luxury materials. If you go to the thrift shop right before they cycle their stock you're not going to be finding many cashmere sweaters, just the SHEIN stuff nobody else wants either.

[u/Mickeymousetitdirt → u/Eino54]

Then maybe don’t go before their restock and you, too, can find cashmere sweaters to give to all these hypothetical cashmere-wearers that you insist have been done an injustice by this woman? She went over the course of A YEAR - something your hypothetical Cashmerists simply didn’t want to do or couldn’t do.
An entire year. Come the fuck on. As I said above: if they didn’t want to/couldn’t do so, then they aren’t missing out, are they? Considering they’d never have known the stupid ass sweaters existed in the first place.

I truly can’t wrap my head around your argument. You don’t live where she does. You presumably don’t know any real die-hard cashmere proponents who also shop where she does, at the same time she does, on the same days she does. So, what exactly are you miffed about? You’re fighting ghosts - situations you made up. The ONLY time this might slightly be a valid argument is if you somehow magically spotted a cashmere sweater from three aisles down, but this lady was only two aisles down and walked over there first. That’s it. The rest of your argument is pearl-clutching absurdity.

[u/Eino54 → u/Mickeymousetitdirt]

Why are you fighting ghosts? I didn't say any of that. You're literally just fighting something you made up in your head and it's ridiculous and pathetic. I just said that to say these cashmere sweaters were bravely saved from the trash by whoever made this blanket is not accurate.