"cloth fibers ranked by how much sense they make to me"

December 27, 2024 7:39 AM

Wool, silk, plastic, and a few other clothes fibers, ranked. By hobbitron-3000. A short Tumblr post that amused me.
posted by brainwane (11 comments total)

Mostly makes sense to me. However, how can you climb trees AND be afraid of caterpillars? That’s like playing baseball and hating Oh Henry candy bars!
That’s unpossible!
posted by evilDoug at 8:02 AM on December 27 [4 favorites]

Pity me, for I spent eighteen years growing up in a house with a mulberry tree that would dump its fruit all over the lawn every summer and didn't acquire a taste for them until years after I'd left home and just before my parents moved away.

Good climbin', tho.
posted by rory at 8:12 AM on December 27 [2 favorites]

Carbon fiber: nonsense. Sheep and plants are already carbon-based lifeforms.
posted by lazugod at 8:33 AM on December 27 [1 favorite]

Pages like this are What The Internet Is For. Sadly my favourite example of such a thing perished more than decade ago. Happily the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine exists.
posted by BCMagee at 10:20 AM on December 27 [6 favorites]

He left out rayon, where you start out with a tree and end up with socks, through a series of steps that are variably deadly. What even is that?
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:49 AM on December 27 [3 favorites]

I found this video on flax production, for those who (like me) haven't seen one. It is indeed a plant that gets combed until it turns into hair, but I found the process gradual enough to not be too distressing. Somewhere on this gigantic internet there's probably a longplay video that shows the same flax batch through every step in real time, I'm sure.
posted by dick dale the vampire at 11:52 AM on December 27 [3 favorites]

My takeaway was also, wait, how does linen get made from flax? I found a different video though. It sounds like there might be several, and while I share hobbitron-3000’s enduring bewilderment at how this all somehow works, I think I’m even more amazed trying to imagine who figured this out first.
posted by pulposus at 2:14 PM on December 27

The flax talk reminded me of watching how Korean ramie fabric is made— which is so labor intensive!
posted by actionpact at 2:41 PM on December 27

Yes, but how do you make FIVE TONS OF FLAX?
posted by Reverend John at 5:20 PM on December 27 [1 favorite]

The flax talk reminded me of watching how Korean ramie fabric is made

Equatorial and subtropical climate civilizations just immediately jumping into cotton and silk as soon as trade routes open feels very relatable once you see what options we have available. (For southeast Asia, some parts of us got to convert pineapples, others a type of extremely short-fibred cotton-like thing called kapok, but really most of us had to make do with softening tree bark)

So uh, wool for me is extremely odd and alarming. What do you mean you make clothes out of hair. /Just offering another pov
posted by cendawanita at 8:37 PM on December 27 [5 favorites]

So uh, wool for me is extremely odd and alarming.

How about felt? That’s hair you get wet and press into sheets!
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:29 AM on December 28