Financial Accessibility of Yarn - Jul 21, 2020 (Patreon Archive)

As I said on IG here, first and foremost, stop the shaming all around. Stop shaming knitters/crocheters for not being able to make with hand dyed yarn and stop shaming small business hand dyers for the cost of their yarn. To reiterate my perspective as a designer, suggesting alternatives is a great idea. It does require some research. I could still promote a small business AND suggest alternatives. 

Because I have knowledge as a knitwear designer and my background in textiles and fashion in general, I am equipped with talking about various yarn substitutions that will work. It isn’t as easy as picking a fiber/yarn at a lower price point. It’s about yarn structure (is it single ply, twisted, chainette?), drape, hand feel, gravity/weight of the FO, etc. I have knit gauge in swatches and then the garment comes out completely off because the yarn might not have acted the way other yarns I have knit with do. For accessories, there is more wiggle room. I’m sure some of you have experienced this. Just listing yarns at a different price point isn’t enough without investigating a bit more about how the yarn will function in my design. As a designer, seeing my designs knit in different kinds of yarn is important to me. It shows versatility in my design if different yarns are used. Otherwise, my design only looking good in one yarn would not be a very good design. That wouldn’t make me a very good designer either.

Here are all the nuanced parts of this discussion. The conversation seems to surround "expensive" versus "budget-friendly" yarn. What is often missed in the conversation is that every knitter/crocheter/crafter just wants to be included and not see a price tag and feel like they can’t be a part of something, especially when it feels like they can’t belong in their own community. Belonging in the knitting/crocheting/crafting community should not be determined by how much money you can spend on yarn. That is exclusion. Exclusion is the act of leaving someone out. Of course, these topics are way more nuanced even after that because it really isn’t just about yarn. By not including financial accessibility or socioeconomics in conversations about inclusion, we are indirectly being racist. In the United States, 32 percent of African-American children and adolescents, 31 percent of Native Americans children and adolescents, and 26 percent of Latinx children and adolescents are living in poverty, which is more than double the 11 percent poverty rate for non-Latino, White, and 11 percent of Asian children and adolescents (Kids Count Data Center, Children in Poverty 2018). In the world, “more than two thirds of extremely poor people in low income countries and lower-middle income countries live in households where the head of household is from an ethnic minority group… Further, more than 80 percent of people with disabilities live in developing countries, illustrating both the confluence of poverty and disability and the importance of proactively addressing the needs of people with disabilities in development strategies.” (Human Rights Watch) These are very important things to consider when we talk about financial accessibility because it disproportionately affects marginalized communities the most.

Paying for hand dyed yarn from a small business is not “expensive”. It’s paying them a living wage. In saying their yarn is “expensive” is discrediting their work and being able to provide for themselves with a stable income, which is in turn not acknowledging their financial situation. What I want to focus on here is how do we make any yarn more financially accessible for everyone so no one is excluded. More financially accessible yarn shouldn’t mean options that are harming our environment or feeding into capitalism. It should be about financial accessibility to yarn that does NOT harm the environment or human rights to produce. 

For me, when I work with a yarn dyer, I am promoting that person's business. Putting a yarn in my patterns or in my social media is directly or indirectly drawing money in that direction. Not all large corporations manufacture yarn unethically but when it comes to low cost, we need to look closely and ask why and how the manufacturers are living off these low prices. I've tried to find information on where Lion Brand, Hobby Lobby, Michael’s, etc. manufacture their yarn or who is in their supply chain and there is no transparency. I did find that Knit Picks has a page dedicated to talking a little about their manufacturing and development practice, which is more than most large corporations do. Still, more specifics for transparency is needed, like where are the factories, who is employed, what are their wages, what do their working conditions look like, who is in the seats of executive positions that make decisions and possibly change? We would love to see more of that.

So, how do we make less harmful yarn more financially accessible to more people? I think this is where community comes in. When I think “community”, I think of people who are willing to give back, to uplift, support, and respect each other. We know the fiber community lacks some of that but we have also seen the community rise up to the occasion every now and then to support one another in some of our darkest times. We need to cultivate that and not let the people who do still uphold white supremacy take that away from us too. We want to promote small businesses, businesses where we can talk to the actual people behind the product, so they can continue to thrive and we can see them be successful. I've seen several yarn dyers that institute programs that allow their yarn to be more accessible to more people, for example, Knitcraft & Knittery's Community-Funded Yarn Project or Bedhead fiber's Sponsorship Fund. People who are financially able to pay full prices should be paying full prices. Do not take away from people who need more resources that they might not be able to afford right now. I don’t have all the answers as to how this can work on a bigger scale for more people to be included but I see it as a start. None of this change is going to happen overnight. Imagine if more people in the community and industry can build this, where small businesses thrive AND everyone can get their hands on any yarn they want. I think that’s the goal. We should be focused on how everyone can thrive at the same time, this is especially for people who are actually in the industry. Industry professionals should be innovating ways to build systems that will continue to benefit small businesses and individuals rather than corporate companies who only care about the bottom line. We should be dismantling those systems that only funnel the profits all the way to the top and keep others down below them. Our dollars can’t fund these systems anymore, if we can help it.

We need to talk about financial accessibility to less harmful yarn rather than about just including “budget-friendly” yarn because SOME “budget-friendly” yarn can indirectly continue the cycle of exploiting Black and Brown workers, continuing the cycle of white supremacy and capitalism.

Let me break it down.

Synthetic yarns are bad for the environment to produce. Synthetic yarns are any yarn made from man-made fibers, including acrylic, nylon, polyester, rayon/viscose, spandex/Lycra, etc. Basically anything that isn't animal based. Plant based is questionable, depending on the manufacturer. Some plant based fibers, like bamboo, can be processed like a synthetic fiber too. If it doesn't say bamboo linen specifically, it means it was chemically processed instead of mechanically processed (the organic/natural way), which means it is harmful to the environment. You can read more about bamboo processing here.

Acrylic fibers are made by a synthetic polymer, aka plastic, and it is a fossil fuel-based fiber. I’m sure we’ve all heard of what fossil fuel does to our environment and how it will only speed up climate change and destroy our planet, making it absolutely inhabitable for humans. Fossil fuels include burning coal, crude, oil, and natural gases and that produces high carbon content that is destroying our Earth. Any synthetic yarn can have  a similar chemical process to produce like a plastic and we have heard quite a lot about why plastic is destroying the planet already. When manufacturers aren’t clear about where or how their yarn is made, it’s a bad sign that they are harming the environment in making their product. 

Unfortunately, "budget-friendly" yarn is sometimes associated with these synthetic yarns. They are very low cost to produce. One reason why? Cheap labor. And what happens with cheap labor? It means people are not being paid a living wage. It could even mean slave labor and/or prison labor is being used to manufacture these products and it almost majority includes Black and Brown people in poor working conditions. Not all “budget-friendly” yarn is synthetic but the same idea applies, how is it so “budget-friendly”, why is the cost so much lower? Part of anti-racism work is making sure we hold people behind large corporations accountable too if we are asking others to be just as accountable in their commitment to anti-racism and inclusivity too. This isn’t going to be easy but our dollars can do the talking. If we keep giving our dollars in their direction and not demanding transparency of who and how they manufacture their product, we are allowing them to continue manufacturing their product in whatever way they are, including if they are exploiting their workers or exposing the environment to toxic chemicals. We don’t want a solution of one problem driving dollars towards feeding into another problem of continued exploitation of Black and Brown people and destroying our planet.

If you have the means to purchase yarn, great! Make sure that money is going to businesses that aren't hurting people or the Earth. It’s about making better choices and there are definitely affordable better choices out there! It's an important part of anti-racism when it pertains to the fiber industry and really any industry where product is sold. We still need to be intentional about where our dollars go, because dollars have power. We need to ask, who has the power still?

If you know of any large yarn companies that do have more information about where they manufacture their product, please let me know! Would love to do more research on them to include in my list of yarn alternatives in the future.