Mea Culpa

A few months ago I sat down at this computer to read a few of my favorite blogs. I usually sit down and start at the top of the list to the left (do you see it?) and read through each one. That fateful morning when I hit on As The Whorl Spins I never expected to read something that would stick in my mind so much. It is a blog written and kept by my level 3 instructor and I have been following it since my first year of the Master Spinning program at Olds College. Her post called Mea Culpa (like mine..  yes I know it's plagiarism... but I am giving her credit) was all about how she had unwittingly purchased a sweater (because it was cold and she needed a sweater while traveling) and then discovered that her new sweater was full of ACRYLIC! Ordinarily this would not be much of a concern to the ordinary person.... but to those of us in the fibre world (you know.... the un-ordinary ones : ).... those of us who are fibre snobs.... gasp in horror at the thought of purchasing a non-natural fibre sweater. (All together now....gasp!)

It was not that she had purchased said acrylic sweater that so struck me and got me to thinking.... no it wasn't that at all, as a matter of a fact, I actually laughed a little. I have a closet full of acrylic.... and truth be told, nylon, and polyester.... etc, too.  What got me was what she said about how Green Peace and other activists come into her community, (which happens to be a petroleum industry town) with their polyester fleeces and their Gor Tex jackets and their jeans laden with spandex and their other garments made with some form of petroleum product based fabric, and then proceed to protest against the very industry that supplies their clothes. I looked in my closet and gasped!

She's right. I'm as much at fault as anyone. And here I am ranting about environmental concerns and it never even occurred to me that I am as much a culprit as the fellow living in a city with an eight cylinder, gas guzzling truck traveling back and forth to work when he could be using the bus.... I'm every bit as bad at the fellow using a two stroke engine motorcycle... I am a polluter just as bad as anyone else. Mea Culpa! Yeah... you bet!

I thought long and hard about this.

I think there are reasonable uses of petrolium products, some that in this modern world are very hard to get away from. (The medical world is one of those areas.) I don't think we can live with the kind of blossoming populations without some mass produced items. Clothing is one of them.  Let me tell you I certainly was appreciative of my polar fleece last week when I was camping! But we can be thoughtful of what we purchase. Instead of buying the inexpensive sweater that we know is the next best thing to being plastic, why not take a harder look at who we are, and what we want for this world we share, and buy something that was made from renewable resources like wool, or cotton or silk. Even linen is a better choice... though harder to find. One or two items in the closet that have petroleum in them is not terrible but for me the perfect closet would be the one that is mostly wool, cotton, silk....and linen with only one or two items of those petroleum based fibres.

That doesn't mean we have to go out and start slaughtering seals for our winter boots (oh now there's a bone of contention for an expatriate Newfy!) Nor do we have to go looking to the Innuit for Cariboo hides for our outerwear.

I think what I am saying is that we just need to be a little more thoughtful about our usership of those products that hurt the earth and make living on this planet a little more precarious.

It will take me a while to rid myself of this dastardly evidence of my blatant use of petroleum. I am not rich enough to have the luxury of going through my closet and throwing out the things that offend me.... but as I replace old clothing I am going to think long and hard about what I need and look at those natural fibres a little harder... yes they may be more difficult to care for but in the end... we all benefit. 

Mea Culpa?..... we all are....