Somebody buy this yarn, before I'm buried. Please.
Okay, enough of the gross commercialism, some comments on the comments:
Netter mentioned a theory that one reason the pollen count near her is through the roof is because landscaping people are planting more male trees, so as to have less squishy fruit to deal with. That may be the problem up by you, but down here, we don't have that many landscaping plants that are gendered (there's a technical term for it, but damn if I remember), and I doubt most people would have the wit to do it, even if there were. In this area, I blame the problem on all the decorative grasses people use to landscape, as well as coniferous trees, and cattails in the swamps. All those species are known to produce massive amounts of pollen (hell, native Americans used to make bread out of cattail pollen - just scrape it off the stalk and away you go). According to a doctor I used to have, something about coniferous trees makes the pollen unable to trigger an allergy. That may be, but I'm of the opinion just huffing the dust in the air can cause major problems, all supposed allergies aside.
Back on Friday, with my bast fiber post, Trish asked if she could, then, make yarn out of celery fiber. I would say, technically yes. But it'd be an unholy mess, I don't know if the fiber would stay flexible, and I bet it would smell like rotten celery no matter what you did.
Roxie wanted to know about getting salad dressing out of fabric. My only suggestion is dishwashing detergent. Should break the oils down. And it's fairly safe on fabric - I wash wool with it all the time. Good luck.
Since y'all had such a good time with the bast fibers post, would you be interested in more posts about fibers through history? (And I really need to list all those color posts on the sidebar, don't I?)
Off to knit. Or spin. Or wrestle the cat.
6 comments:
More about bast fibers would be nice. I had no idea you could make fiber out of mollusk whiskers. Human beings throughout history have shown themselves to be extremely creative and ancient people are not given enough credit for how clever they were. They may not have had all the modern tools we have but their brains were just as big and they have more than shown themselves to be quite ingenious. (Sorry, if it sounds hoity-toity this is what I tell one of the guys I work with when he tries to tell me aliens built the pyramids)
Oh goody!!! Yarn porn!!!
I know that her in Sacto, fully grown people with no history of allergies have been known to step off the plane and have massive allergy attacks. I don't know what's wrong with our pollen, but it's apparently aggressive as all hell.
And yes--any and all information is good!
Back in my Low Country days it was the grass and pine pollen kicking my butt. Now in Northern California, the last few years it's been primarily the acacia that gives me the worst of fits even though there is plenty in bloom year-round. Think morning glories, roses, azaelas, and great clumps of pink jasmine in bloom on CHRISTMAS DAY. Oy. It is lovely, but wreaks havoc on the sinuses.
Yes, do more plant posts.
And you might be thinking of dioecious? (That took a while to spell!)
Ah, Caroline/Purplish, you beat me to it. I was just about to Google how to spell dioecious! Loosely translated it means "two houses" according to the horticulturist/director of the retreat I go to for writing workshops in the summer in Door Co. Wisconsin.
Plants! Plants! Plants! (gee, I'm eloquent eh?)
Incidentally, I meant to tell you how much Mathboy enjoyed your opening paragraph on Monday. "She knits??" Here's to breaking down misconceptions!
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