Bysmerian

Carpet wool, as the name implies, is a term for the wool from sheep specifically, intentionally bred for centuries to produce wool that is ideal for carpets (historically meaning rugs or, less often, heavy outer blankets, not just carpet like the modern stretched kind stapled to the floor.)

The ideal fiber for an item that is going to be put on the floor and walked on needs to be durable and easy to clean, therefore each strand needs to be long, relatively thick (yes, that means coarse,) and not prone to easily felting.

What it DOESN'T need to be is particularly "soft." The long fibers will make a smooth enough surface to not irritate the soles of your feet and you're not generally going to be wearing a rug right against very sensitive skin all day where you can feel the prickly ends. "Carpet wool" breeds, also known as longwool breeds, have wool fibers that perfectly meet those criteria.

A rug made from wool from a hair sheep or some meat sheep that is coarse but also brittle and short is going to wear out and fall apart ao quickly it's not worth the effort to make it. Therefore, despite being coarse and "scratchy," it is NOT CARPET WOOL. Use that for stuffing pillows or compost it for fertilizer.

A fine, soft, Merino rug is also going to be a felted, pilled, worn-out mess in such a short time it's not going to be worth the effort to make. Save that for a beautiful lace scarf that's going to be directly against the skin of your neck all day. Judging by what's best for rugs, Merino is actually the "garbage" wool.

Anyway, humans spent millenia developing different fibers for different applications, and also words mean things and don't mean other things. Can we please stop calling Lincoln or Wensleydale wool "garbage" because it makes scratchy socks and can we also stop calling Katahdin or Dorper hair "carpet wool" please.

Also, the sheep that grow the wool are absolutely rocking the look.

A fiberist who causally dismisses any breed for its inherent genetic qualities is an indication of inexperience. A novice doesn't have enough data to make an acurate judgment on anything other than their preference. Which, we all have preferences, but being enthusiastically loud about our preferences doesn't make us right.

In a culture fixated on the seductive qualities of soft, our western idiom has been coddled into the false equation of soft=best leading to the unsustainable environment nightmare of microfibers. The first fail in that soft equation comes from comparing hand spun yarns with commercial yarns. The loud opinions tend to get ramped up here, especially when an novice hasn't reconciled the equation:

[Great Yarn = (characteristics of breed or breed blend + preparation method) ÷ spinning technique (± ply)] all influenced by fabrication method of the final project.

Now that☝️equation gets shit done!

Because even though wool is a multifaceted fiber -

It isn't a one-size-fits-all fiber. it's a spectrum of fiber solutions to a variety of situations & needs, producing both textile & non-textile uses

Yes - carpets & rugs are one of those needful situations that specific wools fulfill. However, the same breeds used reliably for industry also have functions in garments & home decor not associated with feet. And, to the experienced fiberist: you don't dismiss wool for not being softy-soft

✨️Fiber✨️ Bruja✨️

As part of a rare breed study, I had the opportunity to spin an Old-World UK Herdwick.

The fleece was the same color of the stones in its native range. It was coarse, full of hair, & kemp. It was tough. The twisted single cut a groove my flyer's wood. The staple was 3-4" (7.5-10 cm) & it held twist perfectly even when spun super-fine.

Plied back upon itself it made a stable 2-ply lace weight.

Despite it being from one of the cutest sheep to grace the hard-knock fells - it was a beast of a fleece.

Our Guild chairperson called the rolags “Godzilla’s pubes” - and he wasn't wrong. It was akin to a natural steel wool pad.

Together, our Guild tried every preparation we knew.

We de-haired, hand carded, drum carded, hackled, & combed. Spun on wheels & hand spindles making singles, & multiple plies. The yarn was crocheted, knitted woven, needle felted, needle punched, & even used in nalbinding. It was deemed filler wool - not even worthy of rug making but the fleece was far to clean to compost.

And - alas - with the same fiber someone spun their sample as cobweb weight and made a square shawl/lap cover - maybe 40" by 40" (a meter square ). Because of the fibre characteristics it held its structure in an open lace that was beautiful. The charcoal gray was stunning - it caught the light here and there where the lighter shades of kemp and hair reflected. It was a most beautiful piece of work

And it is not soft. But it is very lightweight & warm.

And that combination is hard to find in commercial yarns.

The variety of textures in the fiber category of Wools is astounding. There just might be a wool for every need:

Cormo for baby layettes.

Alpaca for the cowl around your neck.

Merino for the colorwork sweater pattern from Ravelry

Shetland for mittens and hats.

Wensleydale socks that will wear well in boots and keep your feet warm.

Lincoln Long wool that - if spun as lace weight or cobweb will make an heirloom lace baby blanket -

Or Herdwick . . . to make a lap warmer for someone whose circulation can't stand the weight of more than a sheet but still needs to stay warm.

All of these could be carpet wool - the last three being far superior & more durable to the task than the others - but they can also be much more.

No you can't all choose darkness. Or shadows. Because either you're joining the bad guys or you're going full chuuni with that option. Pick again.

Crystal? Good stuff, can't fault a classic.

Water? Girl, ok but let's work on that self esteem. Where's your main character energy? Water is sidekick stuff.

Can you- sorry? Did you ask for your element to be *guns?* Are you Rob Liefeld? I don't care what Homura did, you're supposed to be healing hearts and fighting darkness, not capping asses. Back in line.

BDS- wait what?! You can't do that on this show. I don't care what kinds of magical girls you're gushing over! And no whips!

Yeesh. Ok then. Who's next? You want... the endless void? Goddess dammit, no chuuni stuff! You're getting stars.

Who else? You want fire? Just regular fire, not all-consuming hellfire, not flames of lust? Finally! Take two.

ask and ye shall receive: When I write in Japanese I usually also throw it in google translate to double check that I'm not using the wrong kanji by mistake, and two years ago it gave me very dry and literal translations.

I was doing it today and noticed it had a pretty strong voice added to the output

For reference, to give a dry translation I would put: Lately I'm into in Hanafuda. Nobody seems to know anything about it here, so they probably wouldn't understand my brilliant jokes. I guess you guys will never be able to understand "Mister November and the Scary Cave".

I have a fluent friend who is able to check my work for me and give me tips on hitting the correct tone (I was going for a comically casual feeling), so I'm confident that I'm expressing the feeling I'm intending. While Google is also hitting the same emotion, I really don't like knowing that it's assigning tone in the first place.

To check if it was editorializing based on informal grammatical choices, I formal'd up the writing to be more polite and remove any non-standard vocabulary.

What do you mean I'm just using the browser versi-

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

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