Sustainability – Part 2

Adam (00:00): Oh my goodness. I don't know whether to share this.

Georgia (00:01): I hate this for Australia, but I love this story.

Adam (00:04): I promise you, I will never buy you a whisk. Is that better?

Georgia (00:06): Thank you, that's so much better.

Georgia (00:11): Oh, can I have some of the Andex puppy? When I was a child, and I used to go to my grandma's house. I used to roll the toilet roll all over the house—

Adam (00:21): Oh.

Georgia (00:21): And the bathroom. And my grandparents, were like, "what's happened, Georgia?" And I'd be like, "the Andrex puppy did it." I sometimes, occasionally would do it even as a teenager, just to like—

Adam (00:29): Oh my God.

Georgia (00:30): Just, just like, as a throwback. Didn't they change the name of it?

Adam (00:34): Andex when they got rid of puppies on a roll.

Georgia (00:36): Wait, what's puppies?

Adam (00:37): Puppies on a roll. It's what is It's what the whole brand of And... Andrex. they, the Labrador puppies became such a strong thing for them. They just called it puppies on a roll. I'm sure that was a thing.

Georgia (00:46): And maybe they changed it back. 'cause no one cottoned onto that.

Adam (00:48): Oh my God.

Georgia (00:49): Is that why?

Adam (00:50): I could knit with toilet paper? Why have I not thought about that before? I wonder what that—

Georgia (00:53): Because that's a terrible material choice that has no sustainability for the f.

Adam (00:57): Yeah, but I've had, I've had the thought, now it's a bit dangerous. Um, Is that an appropriate segue into our next episode—

Georgia (01:02): Potentially? Yeah. I mean, that wasn't the usual introduction.

Georgia (01:04): You're used to probably getting like, hello and welcome to Yarn Library Podcast with me, Adam Cleevely—

Adam (01:09): And me Georgia Denham, Tulipurl on Instagram.

Georgia (01:12): We should do that more often. That was fun. Why are we talking about Andrex puppies?

Adam (01:15): Well, because I handed you...

Georgia (01:16): I think my grandma one day she sat me down and went, the Andrex puppy's not gonna come anymore, is she?

Adam (01:21): Your poor grandmother spent days after, after every visit that Georgia's been—

Georgia (01:26): It was my granddad mostly. He'd just be there and they thought it was adorable, but they would be there like rolling and they say they all the—

Adam (01:32): Rolls

Georgia (01:32): Think,

Adam (01:32): You think they thought it was adorable?

Georgia (01:34): No, they loved it. They loved it. Um, but there'd be these like wonky rolls. And they're quite, they're quite particular people. I mean, neurodivergence does run in families and so they would be really like, I think, agitated by having these wonky rolls that they just had to redo—

Adam (01:51): I mean, like neurodivergence and which way round toilet rolls hang is a big deal. I think rerolled toilet rolls is a—

Georgia (02:01): Okay, so the, this is, weirdly segueing into one of the things I wanted to talk about.

Adam (02:06): Well, let's go for it. Let's see if we can go straight from a tangent with no context whatsoever back onto a main theme.

Georgia (02:13): Okay, so intentional choices. When we're talking about sustainability and craft, we talked last week about how it's a hodgepodge, variability, lots of different choices. We have a lack of concrete information very often, oftentimes in handcrafts and I also said that, it can be like the perfect place to dive into these more sustainable considerations. And I think hand in hand with that, it can also just promote a general mindset of like, making intentional choices. That I think really, really links in with sustainability. If you knit things or you crochet things and you see how long it can take to make something by hand, or machine... I think you get a sense of slowing down that's really... can be beneficial when you're making other choices. It can bring a kind of intention. So like you say, that craft can have a benefit for your mental health. It can have a benefit for your physical wellbeing, there's so many different things about it that are positive and I really think that part of the sustainability conversation is also the mindset that being a crafter brings when you are, you are making something. And the reason that this sort of segued was because, I have this concept that I think of where I look for forever items. Like when you think of dogs wanting a forever home, right? Andrex puppies.

Adam (03:29): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (03:30): And when you mentioned about like toilet roll and which way you hang it. I mean this is the story I was gonna bring anyway, it reminded me of someone I used to live with and this comes into the forever item situation. This particular person had a very particular way of hanging toilet roll that they insisted was the way that we needed to do it. And when we didn't do it kind of annoyed her she would hang the roll with the tail.

Adam (03:57): Yeah.

Georgia (03:58): Facing the wall.

Adam (03:59): Yeah. I knew you were gonna say that. I knew, I could see on your face—

Georgia (04:02): Just wait—

Adam (04:02): Face, just you, the—

Georgia (04:03): Just wait—

Adam (04:04): The tension in your face. Like I knew it was so upsetting. And obviously there is only one way to hang it. And the way you've just described it is wrong.

Georgia (04:12): Yeah.

Adam (04:12): But how you gonna make it worse? Worse. So—

Georgia (04:14): So she would also pull it all the way down almost to the floor.

Adam (04:20): What? And—

Georgia (04:21): As a courtesy to the next user, so there was a piece there ready for them to rip off.

Adam (04:26): I'm so disgusted.

Georgia (04:27): I know. Exactly. So that paints the scene. Now you know what kind of a person this was? A brute.

Adam (04:33): I'm worried that they're gonna write in and complain. How, how dare you mention me—

Georgia (04:36): I have not spoken to this person in years. I'm happy to burn bridges.

Adam (04:39): With this absolute monster of a person.

Georgia (04:41): If, I almost feel like I must have shared this story at a Rogue Yarn Club, so you might have heard this, but I am happy at this point to go on record with this story because I think it's the right time. I will obviously not name names. That's not what we do here. But I will, I would like to tell the tale of my forever whisk.

Georgia (04:57): So during the pandemic YL18 – Compilef Audio: mm-hmm.

Georgia (05:00): I was locked down in my flat in Birmingham it was a dingy, mouldy one, but the rent was cheap. I graduated, bang into the pandemic. So I was a 2020 graduate and I was on universal credit for a bit, I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do. I eventually got like a part-time job in a supermarket and that's a whole other, I dunno, tale and can of worms. Um, but life is generally not, not great. Okay?

Adam (05:26): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (05:27): Now. I've always been a person of intentional choices. Particularly in that time, I didn't have a lot of money, but I was still very much determined. I was always raised with this idea of like, you buy something once, you buy the best that you can afford. It's funny because one of the things that my family are very particular about is kitchen things and cutlery.

Adam (05:45): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (05:46): And like crockery and stuff. I thought that was because, well, a) 'cause everyone was like that. And b), because we were in Sheffield and my parents worked in the steel- cutlery industry.

Adam (05:57): Yeah.

Georgia (05:57): My dad paints spoons, cutlery for electroplating, very much a craft. So the fact that my dad knows lots about his spoon preferences and his knife fork preferences, I thought that was just normal.

Adam (06:11): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (06:12): Perhaps it was speaking a little bit to the genetic neurodivergence of our family. Just a, just a touch. When it comes to kitchen wares. Very intentional. I took a year out to work and save up before uni and my dad and I, we spent a year getting my kitchen things and many of them I still have and use use every day. It was like a, a nice fun daddy daughter project that I did during that year out. And sometimes I'd meet him after work and we'd go around TK Maxx and I'd pick pots with rivets without spot welding. All very, very intentional. There was one item there that I could not figure out. I couldn't find my forever whisk.

Adam (06:48): Right.

Georgia (06:49): The elusive forever whisk. This had continued, I mean, since I'd been looking for when I was 18.

Adam (06:54): Like a balloon whisk.

Georgia (06:55): Yeah, like a hand mixy, any kind of whisk. Right.

Adam (06:58): The, well, you can't say, you can't say any kind of whis, I'm afraid.

Georgia (07:01): I know, I know.

Adam (07:01): There are so many different kinds of whisk.

Georgia (07:03): Exactly. I wanted to pinpoint the type of whisk that would serve my needs. That would be easily cleanable. One of my big issues with a lot of whisks when there's like a balloon whisk is that there are little holes in the, connection between the handle and the metal—

Adam (07:18): Balloon—

Georgia (07:19): Balloon where little bits of dirt or like muck food residue could get into the handle and then you can't get in it to clean it.

Adam (07:27): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (07:27): So you either need a really like solid seal there or I've just, I've got parameters. I'd had these parameters very carefully for a long time.

Adam (07:36): Meanwhile, you've not been able to whisk anything?

Georgia (07:38): Well, I would figure it out. I'd use a fork or I'd borrow a whisk from a friend. Generally, there was a whisk for me to use, but I didn't have a personal whisk that was my own whisk because I still had not found that elusive dream whisk.

Adam (07:52): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (07:52): And every time I went to a cook shop, I would look at whisks. This is so neurodivergent, like how did they not know? How did they not know? If I went to a different country, I would be like, maybe they have different brands of whisk here and I could never bloody find the whisk that I wanted.

Adam (08:05): Did you find a whisk?

Georgia (08:06): Well bear with. So I live with this toilet roll girl...

Adam (08:11): Uhhuh

Georgia (08:11): And one of the whisks that we were using during the pandemic, when I didn't have a lot of money, it was a crappy whisk that had come from somewhere, not purchased. It just sort of came with a flat. It was one of these weird things that just hovers around.

Adam (08:24): Yeah.

Georgia (08:24): Spot welded. The handle broke off it and I was like, I don't want to buy another whisk. We're in a pandemic. I can't look at things. I can't make the choice. We'll just keep using this whisk and so I just had to hold it by the bits of metal that were sort of sticking out. So it was slightly uncomfortable, but I made it work. Right.

Adam (08:43): Yeah. Yeah.

Georgia (08:43): Just held it. This girl was like, she'd come sort of come into the kitchen, she'd go, "looks like you need a whisk". And I was like, "oh, that's so sweet. But, I've been thinking about a whisk for several years now actually. And I really, I really don't want a whisk".

Adam (08:58): She was offering to buy you one?

Georgia (08:59): Well, because we were in pandemic, we were all locked down. We were all gonna be together for Christmas. So she sort of said, "maybe I'll get you one for Christmas". And I was like, oh, that's really sweet. But, please don't. I explicitly told her twice, please don't buy me a whisk. Come around Christmas day, I get this oddly shaped package. Birmingham had been called into the second highest tier of lockdown, so I'd not been able to go home to my family, but her family lived locally so she could see them. And I was in a bad emotional state. And then I opened this present she's got me this bloody whisk from one of the high street shops that's sort of like Ikea, where you walk around it and they sell everything for a good round number. It was all of the things I didn't want in a whisk. She was just like, smugly, sort of sat there with one eyebrow raised and I'd like to think it came from a good place, but really, I think it came from a, "I want to prove you wrong and I'm going to buy you a whisk even though you've asked me not to buy you a whisk two or three times".

Adam (09:53): And now you're carefully nurturing the whisk because it's your forever whisk?

Georgia (09:56): No, it broke. It broke about six months later. I'm saying this all a bit, kind of tongue in cheek but it started the concept for me of like the "forever whisk" of like, sometimes there are things in life, where you could say, "oh, this is really not important, and just buy a bloody whisk".

Adam (10:13): Yep.

Georgia (10:14): Yeah. I'm seeing that look in your eyes. Okay. But for me, that was years that I learned all about whisks.

Adam (10:23): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (10:23): And I knew what I wanted from a whisk. I can't even tell you how many reviews I've read about whisks. So that's my forever whisk story. You know, you could have a "forever whisk" version of that story in any kind of way. You could be listening to this and going like, this is dripping with privilege and to some people it wouldn't be important, but it was so important to me that I was not gonna have a whisk that was gonna break and that I wouldn't wanna replace in the future because I wanted to make that one decision that it was gonna be something that would last. And I feel like that is a really important conversation with sustainability is making those intentional choices. I'm not trying to say that in "ah, well look at how high and mighty I am because I spent six years, seven years trying to buy my whisk". I don't mean it in that sense, but I think there are, there are different approaches to this, and the approach of my friend was like, I'll just, "I'll just buy her a whisk and that will be fine".

Adam (11:15): I mean, to play devil's advocate, like the amount of wasted brain time and—

Georgia (11:20): It was not wasted.

Adam (11:22): I know that's your counter to it, but—

Georgia (11:24): It was comforting.

Adam (11:24): A lot of people listening would say, that's a complete waste of time just buy a whisk and stop thinking about it.

Georgia (11:30): Yeah. But...

Adam (11:31): And that's a—

Georgia (11:32): It was,

Adam (11:32): You know, also metal. I would also argue that if you bought something that's metal, it's a hundred percent recyclable. So it's not, it's not as...

Georgia (11:41): But then the environmental impact of it needing to be melted down and all that kind of jazz.

Adam (11:45): Yeah.

Georgia (11:46): And how much recycled metals actually going back into the things. I'm a, I'm a steel, I'm of steel stock. You can't, you can't throw around metal recycling near me and not expect some fact checking.

Adam (11:58): I dunno what metal it was, it was going to be made of. So Yeah, it's fair.

Georgia (12:02): I totally get you and you could say it's just wasted, thoughts, and I'm not forever whisk about everything, but it was something that brought me joy, the idea of getting something that usefully would work for me forever and would take into account like my future needs and different stages of my life. And that's been a, a really nice thing for me with my kitchen wears and I still use many of the same things that I went to university with. And you can all. I dunno... we are talking about sustainability and I'm trying to give you ways of jumping in here, but you are just so disgusted with me. I can see it.

Adam (12:37): I just dunno where to go, like I've got, we've got a list of like 20 topics that we didn't cover in the previous episode.

Georgia (12:43): And now I've talked about this for 20 minutes. I'm sorry.

Adam (12:46): Like,

Georgia (12:46): Well ceramics.

Adam (12:47): We're actually genuinely coming up on 20 minutes of the recording and like all we've managed, like we agreed that the first thing we were gonna talk about in this episode was superwash wool. And 20 minutes into recording is my opportunity to jump in and I'm really, I promise you I am trying to think about how to connect—

Georgia (13:04): I'm sorry.

Adam (13:04): A whisk with superwash yarn.

Georgia (13:07): I was gonna briefly tell my whisk story and then we were gonna talk about the impact of ceramics and making intentional choices. And then you were gonna talk about superwash and I'm sorry that I. I don't know. I'm sorry.

Adam (13:21): Where, where would you like to go, Georgia? What do you want to talk about? Well—

Georgia (13:23): I know that I've been talking for a while, but I will read this out so that it's just done with quickly and then we can move on to super wash. I—

Adam (13:30): Are we still talking about the whisk?

Georgia (13:31): No.

Adam (13:32): Okay.

Georgia (13:32): No, I'll never talk about the whisk ever again. I'm now clear that you do not wanna hear about my whisk.,

Adam (13:39): I'm gonna tell after we finish Georgia, I'm gonna take you over to my cutlery drawer and I'm going to, I—

Georgia (13:44): I'm so interested actually.

Adam (13:45): Cooking, cooking equipment draw and I'll, I'll show you—

Georgia (13:47): You've got quite a kitchen.

Adam (13:47): Some of them. I've got some things that, I've got a sauce that is, I must have used it for 25 years.

Georgia (13:53): Mm-hmm.

Adam (13:54): It was definitely a round water when I was a student.

Georgia (13:56): Yeah, yeah.

Adam (13:57): But it wasn't made as an intentional choice. It's kind of, it's just, it's made well enough and it's stainless steel that it just lasts—

Georgia (14:03): Sometimes those things accidentally end up being the things that stick around.

Georgia (14:08): So. Ceramics. This was going to pivot nicely into, when you can make intentional choices about things, sometimes that intentional choice could offset a larger environmental impact of an item. So, when it comes to ceramics, your instincts might be saying like, oh, local ceramics maker, local potter, I'll go to them. That will be like, so much more sustainable and earthy and crafty. And actually the environmental impact of small scale ceramic pottery studios really, really high impact relative to commercial buying something, it being imported, mass produced from a different country. For example, like, if something was mass produced in China, and you went to a supermarket and you wanted to buy a bowl or a mug, the environmental impact, the lifecycle analysis, of that item would be far less coming from China, from mass production than if you go down the road to your local ceramic artist maker and fire a mug from them. There's a paper I'm gonna link to, by Giorgio Salani. I saw him give a presentation on this at a craft conference last year, and it was really, really fascinating actually, just talking about all of these challenges that the, ceramic arts kind of really struggle with. Slow technological development and material development for, for something that is like a relatively small, like not a lot of skin in the game. Like, there's not a lot of industrial interest in these small producers, your kilns are mostly running on fossil fuels almost exclusively to get those really, really high top temperatures and for a small, small thing.

Adam (15:46): Well, that's the physics of it. Yeah. Because if you need to keep something over a thousand degrees for more than a day.

Georgia (15:53): Yeah, exactly.

Adam (15:54): Then the heat loss from that, is enormous. But if you've, if the volume that you are having to keep hot is small, then the heat loss per unit volume that you've got is really, really high. Whereas I've worked in an industrial process where I've seen a, I've been next to a kiln, which is, I don't know, a hundred metres long, 20, 30 metres wide, where, in a brick factory, and there you are firing bricks out over a thousand degrees and they've got to be that temperature for multi days and you're producing hundreds of thousands of bricks a day like that is a huge kiln that you go through, and it's an enormous amount of gas that's used. But on the other hand, it is incredibly efficient relative to a tiny kiln.

Georgia (16:38): Mm-hmm.

Adam (16:38): In a small studio.

Georgia (16:39): Well, it's like sometimes people think that the machine or some industrial practises then that they're in some way not gonna be better. I mean, this isn't strictly sustainability, but I mean opticians, I men... went to a fancy pants opticians where they did everything by hand, very proudly. And some of the lenses they put on my eyes, I remember they had like fingerprints on them. I couldn't see through them. And I remember mentioning it to the optician and they said, "oh no, it's fine. Don't worry". YL18 – Compilef Audio: It's artisanal.

Georgia (17:04): And um, yeah. And in the end I went back to them twice, paid lots of money to see them 'cause I was having migraines and stuff and thought it was the right choice to go and see this fancy pants optician. And in the end, I couldn't afford to go back to them again. Went to Specsavers and they had these great big machines, but the amount of people that they see and the accuracy of the high tech equipment that they had and everything else meant that they figured out pretty quickly that I'd been given a prescription in the opposite direction. So it had been—

Adam (17:33): Oh my goodness.

Georgia (17:33): I know. Yeah. That's why I was having lots of migraines, and had been there twice. So... yeah, not great. Um, so sometimes these things are actually...

Adam (17:42): What I was saying last week about where the artificial fibres—

Georgia (17:46): Yeah.

Adam (17:47): You know, things like polyester, acrylic and so on, that those fibres are incredibly efficient because anytime humans want to make something at massive scale, people get really interested in the economics of it.

Georgia (17:59): Mm-hmm.

Adam (17:59): And really push the price down. And when you've got a mechanical or chemical process, which can be done at scale, it is going to be optimised very, very heavily. And it will, that's, that's the whole point of the industrial revolution. I mean, if, if hand knitting teaches you anything, it is about how important the industrial revolution was for textiles manufacturer, 'cause if you have to knit all your clothes, it takes an awful lot of work out the economy.

Georgia (18:24): Yeah.

Adam (18:24): And once you can do that mechanically, you get a huge economy boost—

Georgia (18:28): Mm-hmm.

Adam (18:28): From the productivity. So like, it, like, it shouldn't be a surprise that anything that's a hundred percent mechanical is going to be massively more, efficient.

Georgia (18:38): Yeah. But I mean, suppose you could be thinking, "oh, well I can never support my local ceramic potter. How, how could I not?" The thing is if you purchase something from your local ceramic person and that is something that you love and you use all the time, and you use that and it means that you aren't going to be buying the 5, 6, 7 mugs from Tesco, if it's displacing that, then maybe it is worth you getting that one ceramic thing. That's what we did for our wedding, actually. We didn't have like a registry at a shop or something. We went to a specific ceramic person, a maker, Sondergard, Lars, really amazing, Danish British. He's lived here for a long time and makes the most beautiful, beautiful ceramics and pottery. I mean, I didn't even know about this environmental, bonkers, " wow, it's like four or five times more impactful than buying something mass produced". I didn't know that at the time. But the way that I've been able to rationalise it since seeing that is it was an intentional choice. We very deliberately decided this is gonna be the crockery that we use every day. I had my breakfast off it this morning. So everyone like chipped into a pot and then we bought the plates and bowls of our dreams and we use 'em all the time and they're gorgeous.

Adam (19:55): Yeah, that's such an important point because the other option there is, particularly for, a young couple, you go to Ikea and buy the cheap plates and then, but what happens then is a few break, five, 10 years down the road and you just think, well, I'm just gonna get rid of that set and buy another one. And then what happens is you might be buying a set five times over a lifetime, whereas you probably won't do that. You know, you might, you say it's a forever set. You might have one or two sets then over a lifetime instead. So that's, I mean, that's the difference really in, I suppose a combination of intentionality and also the amount of care that you, that you put into something.

Georgia (20:32): Mm-hmm.

Adam (20:32): And the amount of like, like how much you value it, and it's your, it's not just the financial value, it's also the, the value you imbue just from the emotional side.

Georgia (20:42): Well, it's the almost being a custodian of item actually. 'cause the thing is when we, when we got this new fancy crockery, one of the considerations is, okay, well what do we do with our set from before? And the set that we have from before was the one that I'd bought when I went to university. Then in terms of being custodians of it, we had some friends who were just kind of setting up house around that time, and I said, look, would you like this set? I've had it for like 10 years, but it's still, none of them are chipped, they're great. And so then they, took the set of plates and I mean, you can't always, there are lots of times when I'm just like, it's gonna end up in landfill anyway. I just need to chuck it to get it out of my brain space, minimalism.

Adam (21:23): Mm.

Georgia (21:23): But sometimes you do have the opportunity to actually hand on an item and be intentional about it, and that can be a good thing.

Adam (21:30): I've got a couple of stories here. I'm going straight into fibre. One, there was a story I saw on, through Reddit over the weekend where someone had requested a jumper, I think it was a sister-in-law who was a knitter had knit the item for them. So they'd said, when you make me this jumper, I want to choose the colours. And they declined that offer and instead just knitted it in beige and then given it to them, and then this person received it and then wouldn't wear it because it wasn't their colours and it wasn't what they wanted. So then eventually decided to dye it themselves and made it green, wore the jumper, and then the person said, "oh, that looks just like the jumper I knitted for you". And they said, "oh, yes, I dyed it green because I didn't like beige and I was never gonna wear it". Huge argument insues. I mean, this is where no one's a winner outta this, right? Because the knitter was super upset, too. Super upset because it was Malabrigo yarn. They'd saved it was a special thing for them because they had chosen the yarn, but the recipient couldn't wear that, wasn't gonna wear that colour.

Georgia (22:32): Yeah.

Adam (22:32): And so that wasn't a, it wasn't gonna be an item. Whereas then dying at green for them makes a, makes it into an item they were gonna keep.

Georgia (22:40): Where do you sit on that?

Adam (22:41): I mean, I, there are mistakes at every single point in that for me.

Georgia (22:46): Mm-hmm.

Adam (22:47): And so I don't, like, I think both parties have, there are issues with what both parties did on that, but I think you can't come down and say that either one of them was to blame for then the ensuing disagreement.

Georgia (23:01): Mm-hmm.

Adam (23:02): At personally, what I love doing is I love talk, if I'm gonna knit something for someone else, I always talk to 'em about fibre choices.

Georgia (23:08): Yeah.

Adam (23:09): Both colours and the fibre that something's made of because that's, like, that's such a big reason for making something for someone is to get that right. Um, so I would've taken a different choice there, but I also understand the, I wanted to make it for you. And so I wanted to choose the fibre that I think worked. But I think if you do that, you do, you do run the risk that it doesn't work for someone. Mm-hmm. They decide they don't like it.

Georgia (23:32): I mean, at some point you wanna have a gift knitting episode consideration but my instinct is I'd rather the item get used and although I acknowledge that there are problems and mistakes along the way, actually, I think maybe I'd be more upset if there was like, colour work in it or something like that, taking a bit more time. But if it's a plain coloured jumper and someone says. "Oh, actually, yeah. I dyed it because I wasn't gonna wear it, and I really appreciated that you made this thing for me, but I wanted to wear it, and so I dyed it a colour".

Adam (24:05): I it's a, it's a, it a tricky one.

Georgia (24:06): It's a tricky one.

Adam (24:07): And there's... i... it's one of those things where I think no one comes out of a winner.

Adam (24:10): I'm also thinking about, last week I briefly mentioned, a jumper, which, so me and my mom, I went around to see my mom for Mother's Day. And we went, we were reminiscing about my grandmother, my mum's mum. Um, she was a knitter and she, we decided to go up into the loft and pull out some boxes of old clothing, to have a look for stuff that my grandmother had knitted and we found this old jumper, which I pulled it out. I reckon it's about big enough for a 6-year-old or so. So we could—

Georgia (24:44): That's really nice.

Adam (24:44): We could, we could very quickly identify size wise. And I said, I don't think I ever wore this. Like, as soon as I touched it, I said, I don't think I ever wore this. And my mom said, well, you must have done. And I said it must have bypassed me. Maybe so I have a cousin on that side. He's a year and a half older than me, it could have been made for him. Then maybe my brother wore it. I'm absolutely certain I never wore it. And my mom was like, why, why is that? And the reason is that as soon as I touched it, I know that is not a wool I could tolerate being anywhere near me. It is a very rough, non-super wash yarn, and I have incredibly sensitive skin to wool. And it's, it's not that I'm, I'm not allergic to it at all to be really clear, but I'm very, that roughness and sharpness that people feel when they talk about wool being itchy. That is me on steroids. And so when that jumper, when I, when I touched it, I was like, this, I could just feel my childish self. There is absolutely no way. So then we went to all the photos, because we know the size of child that it looks like it's for, we're trying to find a photo of me in it. And as of time of recording, we have not found that photo, but we went, went through 86, 87, 88, and 89 photos and haven't found it. Mind you, we also haven't found it on my brother or sister, and it is stained, so it's obviously sustained... it obviously did get used, but yeah, that is a, like, it's very rough one, it's sitting right next to right now, I'm looking at it over there and it's sitting right next to a super wash yarn scarf that I've made myself recently, which I could wrap myself up in all day because it is...

Georgia (26:24): Soft and cosy.

Adam (26:25): Soft and cosy.

Adam (26:26): But people, when they think about sustainability, people get riled about super wash yarn.

Georgia (26:31): Yeah. So this is something where you mentioned you wanted to talk about this and I've kind of left... I... inform me. Educate me. Learn me.

Adam (26:41): These are all my buzz words.

Georgia (26:42): I've watched videos about this in the past, I've got this vague sense of like, oh yeah, some people get worried about that "there are harsh, chemicals involved in the process of dying". I'm very much one of these people that like water's a chemical like. I'm not meaning it in that flippant sense, but...

Adam (27:00): Exactly.

Georgia (27:01): You know.

Adam (27:01): Water is a chemical and also every bit of wool you buy has been processed.

Georgia (27:06): Yes.

Adam (27:06): You cannot take wool off a sheep and turn it straight into a jumper because it will smell of sheep poo and it will have grass in it. Like, and there are, there are all sorts of reasons why—

Georgia (27:16): And ticks—

Adam (27:16): Yeah, you have to treat it, so wool go through an extensive process of treatment before it becomes the yarn that you knit with. Some of that processing is relatively light. Some of it's heavier, but it does need, at least, it also needs some form of washing, you pull out the fibres that you want to knit with and the fibres you don't want to knit with. So short fibres are taken out during that process because you generally want to knit and spin with long fibres and longer fi... the longer fibres you get from sheep become higher value, and the longest fibres are the most premium wool that you can buy. But that's one of the reasons why merino Sheep is known for like high quality is because it produces some of the longer, uh, wool fibres. It's not the longest, bui is it? I think—

Georgia (28:08): Drambuie is a type of...

Adam (28:09): No ram. It's, it's Rabu. I can't, I've got a, I've got a script—

Georgia (28:14): Sorry. I'm having a Real Housewives moment for anyone who watches Real Housewives of, salt Lake City, Heather Gay has this lovely story about, being young and dating and having Drambuie and that is not what you're talking about. And I'm so sorry. I'm going to take this other little piece of my medication now. Um, just so that I can try and bring some focus back into this.

Adam (28:33): So I was trying to remember sheep breeds and I can't, I'm not gonna quickly be able to do it, so there is some treatment involved in all wool, and like, one of the things that makes fibre soft is by having these very long strands because it means there are fewer ends. Because if you double the strand length, you've, you have halved the number of ends that you have to have and ends are spiky. And that's one of the things that makes wool itchy. The other thing that makes wool itchy is the surface of the wool fibre itself. And the wool fibre is covered in these kind of, they're kind of scales. Um, and they add a lot of structure and texture to the outside of a wool fibre. They don't exist on all wools. So alpaca wool, for example, doesn't have them and all sorts of other animals don't, but sheep wool that lends a lot of structure, which catches on other wool fibres, and that's what also helps give structure to colour work when you knit colour work. And it's why, Shetland sheep are brilliant for colour work knitting as well, that works beautifully because the fibres just matt together very quickly and they felt, but those scales also add roughness to the fibre. And some people will say, "oh well you can just condition it and all the rest of it" and you know you, but ultimately people with very sensitive skin can still feel that. Super wash was one treatment of wool. That's how Super Wash started because someone came up with a process for processing wool and processing the wool fibre so that the, those scales were softened. There are now a number of different processes which all get called super wash. And the reason it's super wash is because it also, this the reason it's important is because you can throw super washing in the washing machine and it's not gonna shrink.

Georgia (30:17): Didn't they have origins with army uniforms?

Adam (30:21): I dunno about that.

Georgia (30:22): Okay. I'll have to check that. But yeah, like it was led by industrial processors and I think the US Army had these wool uniforms and they weren't really machine washable, so you had widespread machine washing becoming a thing and you couldn't put garments in a machine. So then you've gotta design the things that make it possible to machine wash something without shrinking.

Adam (30:42): Exactly. And this comes back to an argument for sustainability and super wash, because super wash I think, makes garments much more sustainable because they make them more approachable and it makes wool a more attractive fibre to knit with because, it's not, you don't have to be so very careful with not felting it and shrinking it. Ultimately, there are a couple of different things that happen, but the scales on the outside of a wool fibre are either eaten away by a chemical process and or they are filled in. Some of the gaps are filled in with a resin. Now, this is where Super Wash gets a really bad name by people that want to dig into it because, chlorine is used in one of the processes where the scales are softened and the edges are, are, they're not completely removed, but it's kind of like they're, it's like if you took sandpaper to it on a really big scale, they're, they're, it's kind of sanded down and—

Georgia (31:37): Exfoliation—

Adam (31:37): Exactly. And the resin that's applied technically as a polymer and therefore is called a plastic and therefore gets accused of being a, a contributor to microplastics and all the rest of it. The quantities used of these, of these chemicals are really, really small. Really small. And I would, I can't, I can't quite use the word insignificant because. Obviously they have significance at scale when you are, when you're talking about tonnes and tonnes of wool production. But they are, for me, they are nothing like as significant as the much bigger choices you take around whether you are going to make yourself a garment or buy one from a shop. They're not as significant as throwing a garment away because you're not, you're buying this year's fashion version. So like, you can't say they're not significant because they are significant choices, just, people blow them wildly outta proportion.

Georgia (32:39): Mm-hmm.

Adam (32:39): And want to take the sound bite that, oh, chlorine's used in the process, or plastics used in super wash yarn, like it's just not the case. The amount of resin that you have left in a super wash yarn is way less than a percent of the overall weight. And also it is embedded within the fibre. Like it becomes part of the fibre. So it is a processed fibre, but I think it's a processing which makes that fibre for me. Certainly it makes it much more sustainable.

Georgia (33:09): Mm-hmm.

Adam (33:09): Because I'm much more likely to use it and wear it for a really long term.

Georgia (33:13): I think it's, it's also like when people hear about processes like this and they hear chlorine and polymers people can think that's a negative. They hear chemical processing and think that's bad.

Adam (33:28): Yeah.

Georgia (33:28): And that's in some way it's not safe. And, I often hear this conversation come up around super wash, in relation to like children's knitting for babies, knitting for children, a friend recently asked me, actually, can you tell me more about Super Wash? Because I've heard that you shouldn't use it for children's things. I was like, if you knit something for a tired parent who has a baby that is messy and pukes and everything, you kind of wanted that to be machine washable.

Adam (33:58): A hundred percent. It is utterly unsustainable.

Georgia (34:02): Yeah.

Adam (34:02): To knit for a child. I would argue in pure wool.

Georgia (34:05): Yeah.

Adam (34:05): Because, because unless, unless you've got, I know, some super human parent—

Georgia (34:10): And also scratchy—

Adam (34:12): Totally like that jumper over there, which I'm pretty sure I never wore.

Georgia (34:15): I remember kind of early on in my knitting journey, it was called Cotton Wool. It's a Rowan one. And I got it in two really lovely colours and knitted up quite a few things with it. And when I was looking at reviews or bits and bobs on Ravelry, one of the criticisms was that it was marketed as a baby yarn. Like all, a lot of the patterns were for baby knits, but it wasn't machine washable. And there was a lot of criticisms that were like, I just don't think it's, it's not really fair to market this as a, baby yarn and then not make it machine washable. That was one of the first times where I really thought about this and realised like, "oh yeah, actually placing a sort of a safety pressure on people, that is actually quite often rooted in misinformation about like, "ah, chlorine, that's bad". Like things are bad contextually.

Adam (35:03): I mean, absolutely like chlorine, most people are happy swimming in a chlorinated swimming pool.

Georgia (35:07): Mm-hmm.

Adam (35:08): And you will get some chlorine into your system from that. You will naturally just swallow a little bit of water that has a little bit of chlorine in it. Most drinking water has a microscopic amount of chlorine in it, like—

Georgia (35:18): Mm-hmm.

Adam (35:18): But it exists. Yet chlorine was also used in the first world war as one of the first ever gases as a weapon. And because in a pure concentrated form, obviously it's lethal. That's what really annoys me about when people want to take the soundbite that, there's chlorine use in the process of creating super wash because. Yes, there is. But do you know what, also, water is lethal in high doses of water. It is lethal to every human. Like, go, go and drink 20 litres of water. And I'm afraid that will be the end of you.

Georgia (35:52): Yeah. Hyperhydration.

Adam (35:53): Yeah. So like, it really winds me up and it, I get very upset as well because I think that one of the great things about Super Wash is it makes wool more approachable for more people. It expands the total market that wool can appeal to. I don't think I would knit as much as I do if I didn't have access to Super Wash Yarn because my fibre choices would be more limited.

Georgia (36:18): Mm-hmm.

Adam (36:19): And I think Super Wash Young helps me. I also love the fact that Super Wash yarn creates another colour palette to work with, because it kind of de scales the outside of the fibre. It also allows dye to strike the fibre in a different way. So if you look at like a big producer like Malabrigo for example, which ev everyone here knows I'm a big Malabrigo fan, but they have super wash and non-super wash bases and you can see the same colour where they'll call—

Georgia (36:44): Yeah,

Adam (36:44): They'll call it the same colour. And you'll see that it will strike those bases in a slightly different way. It has a different appearance. And I also love that because it adds, it adds depth to the colour palette that you get to choose from as a crafter. I was gonna say fibre artist, but that's a whole other, that's a side side debate we're not having in this, this episode. But I appreciate that and I think it's really important. So I, there we go. I said it have, have I made it clear enough? Super Wash. I'm a fan.

Georgia (37:13): I suppose when people do have concerns about these things, it comes back around to that idea of like, we don't almost have the intel, like somewhere where I could kind of get on board with like, okay, questions. The environmental impact of these things. So we've talked about like the toxicity, the safety, all that kinda stuff. The actual environmental impact of this, of small independent dyers using these chemicals, where those chemicals then go if they go into water systems, what happens in an industrial scale, if something's made and they don't follow the proper procedures for disposing of the waste. Those are real questions and I think especially it comes back round to this idea of we don't have enough answers as, individual hand makers in craft about what is the environmental impact of our single skein of yarn, or at least if you, if you do have any information on this, then please send it my way because I couldn't find any, what's it called? The lifecycle analysis. I couldn't find any LCA studies on small scale hand knitting, hand crochet stuff.

Adam (38:17): You are absolutely right there. There there is a danger. You know, there are chemicals used in the processes and there is a danger, where there's, lack of regulation or there's lack of policing that people just dump waste chemicals into river water or whatever.

Georgia (38:29): But even where there are regulations, if, if the worst case scenario is they're gonna, a big multinational company is gonna get, I don't know, slapped on the wrist and given a big fine that they can pay and is inconsequential in the large scale of their business, then is that, is it really making a difference? So I think it's right that, if you have concerns about this, like they're not completely misplaced, is what I wanna say.

Adam (38:51): Yeah.

Georgia (38:51): Like, I don't just wanna rubbish it because we don't have all the information so in that sense, I think just more general compassion and like, do—

Adam (39:03): You know what I'm also realising Georgia, the hypocrisy of what I'm saying. 'cause I think last week I was talking about how there was value to animal rights activists pushing the cause further than, than the regulations would necessarily allow. Then maybe that's, maybe that is an important point for super wash as well. That—

Georgia (39:19): Yeah.

Adam (39:20): You know, that actually how, how do you ensure, I mean I would love that there's a international standard that people could self certify against or, or certify against to demonstrate.

Georgia (39:30): But standard—

Adam (39:30): Like closed, closed loop. Um, for chemicals and so on, that stuff doesn't go to wastewater.

Georgia (39:36): Mm-hmm. There, I mean there are so many so many differences and discrepancies between different standards. I mean, skincare, an interesting one. I don't wanna get too far off piece, don't worry. But, when companies launch some skincare in one part of the world and then other parts of the world, there are certain ingredients that are legal in one place and not legally in another.

Adam (39:54): Oh yeah.

Georgia (39:55): And it's not always just because like one place is more safe than the other, for example, SPF, Bioré have a great SPF. They brought it to the American market from the Asian formulation, and they had to reformulate it. I think looking into it from what I could glean at the time on a consumer level of wanting to understand ha, why is it a different formulation here versus there. I couldn't actually find any information that was saying "oh, well it's because of X, Y, Z ingredient aren't safe". It's just that the, there, there were different formulation expectations.

Adam (40:29): Yeah.

Georgia (40:29): Between those two different places. There—

Adam (40:30): Was a, I mean, having worked in health supplements, so I was, chief executive of health supplements business for many, many, many years, there was a change in regulation about ingredients which came in to Europe, but after we had exited, the Brexit vote, but we took a conscious decision that the UK would probably catch up with that regulation, and so started reformulating on that basis. Now, it was a, it was a small component of a dye in the outside of a capsule, it was in France that it was banned first and it became a EU wide thing. But, you pick up that it was a nuance. Absolutely. It's fine in the US and, the regulations allow it, and it's the same thing again. When Brexit happened, everyone worried that we were gonna get chlorinated chicken from, from the us Yeah. 'cause of different standards.

Georgia (41:20): Oh, I remember. This is reminding me about when I was a child and Supersize Me came out the documentary about McDonald's.

Adam (41:25): Oh yeah.

Georgia (41:26): And, a lot of the things that were referred to in the documentary were like not legal practises in the UK. So British McDonald's did not, at least from my understanding, British McDonald's did not operate on the same standards. Uh, like they had very different practises—

Adam (41:43): Interesting—

Georgia (41:43): Different making. But then people watching the documentary, it was, aired on channel four. Kind of almost in the aftermath, the British McDonald's, maybe you remember this, started on this like advertising uh, front of like really trying to emphasise that like, no, it's "a hundred percent British potatoes" and it's " a hundred percent British beef". We don't have a lot of the same farming practises and like there's a lot of things you can do to animals in America for consumption that you can't do in the UK. And so just by nature of those standards being different, a lot of the things in Supersize Me were not relevant to the UK and yet it's still really impacted the sort of public perception of McDonald's.

Adam (42:25): Sure.

Georgia (42:26): Yeah.

Adam (42:26): I mean, 'cause I didn't think anyone came away from that thinking, oh, do you know what I McDonald's for dinner?

Georgia (42:31): No,

Adam (42:32): It wasn't a flattering documentary.

Georgia (42:34): Yeah. I'm. It's all nuanced. I think that's, that's what we're coming back round to. It's all very nuanced.

Adam (42:42): It is nuanced. If only we were experts in the field, then—

Georgia (42:45): Maybe we could give you more certainty. We are just consumers. We are—

Adam (42:48): We're just consumers. We're just consumers having a chat.

Georgia (42:50): Yes. And—

Adam (42:51): Our audience is choosing to listen to us or not. Who knows who switched off at this point?

Adam (42:55): When I was preparing for this episode, I was thinking, or pair of episodes, I was trying to look at wool pricing and the demand for wool overall in clothing and looking for the statistics of how and when wool declined and the pricing of that. My hypothesis started out that the reason for the decline in pricing of wool was largely that it was pushed down by the abundant, availability of petrochemical based, fibres being available because they're made by industrial processes, they become very, very cheap. And that forces the price of wool down because wool is a minority of the market. In the sixties it was 10% of the market, now it's 1% of the market. In an economy, where you've got 50% of the market being made up of artificial fibres, which is the place it is now, that dominates the price that you can get for wool. Because if you can get something very cheap, why are you gonna pay twice or three times over to have something made outta wool, particularly if consumers don't understand the benefits of wool. But I was really interested in how and when that pricing change happened...

Adam (44:00): And I came across what I found to be a fascinating case study, which is that the Australian market in the, in the seventies, the Australian government wanted to help protect and grow the wool market for Australian farmers. So Australia has been at mu as much as 25% of the global market for wool production. That's a, that's a lot of wool that came out of Australia, but it's also a fragile industry because, when you've, like any commodity, prices go up and down from time to time. Farmers always struggle where prices change over time because you have to commit to your investment not knowing the price you're gonna get out. When, when you come to get the dividend now for a field, you're gonna, you're gonna see the field and then within months you're gonna hopefully see your crop come out. With sheep, you have to choose how many sheep you're going to farm, and then that is a commitment you're making over if, if you're making that farm for sheep wool, that's a multi-year commitment. So expecting that dividend to be paid back over a long time for the investment that you are, when you're buying the land and investing in the, in the breeding stock. The Australian government wanted to provide more certainty and surety for farmers who were really struggling to get a fair price for wool. And so they, created a guarantee system. And this rings alarm bells for economists these days, like, because it's, it's, it's fraught with danger. But what they agreed is if the price for wool in the market ever went below a certain price point, the Australian government would always guarantee that they would buy the wool at that price.

Georgia (45:46): This feels weird.

Adam (45:48): Well, it has happened from time to time.

Georgia (45:50): Mm.

Adam (45:50): And, it kind of guarantees that the farmers are always going to get a minimum price for wool.

Georgia (45:56): Mm-hmm.

Adam (45:56): What happened is there was then great investment in wool, during the eighties, there was a huge increase in demand, and so prices were going up and up for wool. Australian farmers were producing more wool. And the overall economy for that did really, really well. But then there was a change in demand, and the demand went down, so the price had to go down. But the Australian government had this guarantee scheme in place. Relatively, for a small change in price, paid for wool, there was, a significant change in demand. But a huge amount of wool fell under the threshold of the price that the government would pay for it. So the government ended up buying under contract millions and millions of kilos of wool.

Georgia (46:41): Wow.

Adam (46:42): And ended up with a stockpile of wool, which was equivalent to about a quarter of the global supply, about a year's worth of Australian wool. So that's just because of a, a small change in the supply. So the government was then holding onto, I think it's about four, they called it 4 million bales of wool. In 1990,1991...

Georgia (47:02): I hate this for Australia, but I love this story. This is crazy.

Adam (47:06): It's, it's like, it's like the tulip crisis in, yeah. In the Netherlands, in the 18 hundreds. Like, like how it, how to ruin an economy with something like relatively simple and it's, it's always. Economics that gets in the way of it. But, but so that was then the problem. Then the Australian government owned a year's worth of supply of wool. You know that the problem you've got then all of a sudden, all of the world, like it's, you can think, well, it's only a quarter of the global supply for a year, but that is enough to have a really big impact on the price of wool. And so the government had to offload this wool, but they couldn't do it immediately because if they tried to sell it onto the international market, the government obviously makes a huge loss on that. They can't afford to do that quickly. Also, if they do that, they bankrupt Australian farmers, so they own all this wool that no one wants and is super high valued. So the Australian government has to unwind that position—

Georgia (47:58): Unwind (laughter)

Adam (47:58): That... spin back on it, and they do so through the nineties. But it causes, like, some people point to that as a, as one of the significant moments in the pricing of wool. Now, I think the background economics to wool were the background, like wool was in decline anyway, but there was a, that was a, that was an additional shock to the system. I don't, I dunno, that was new to me, so much in knitting and wool is new to me. But I was like, that tickled me because that's a good economic story of like potential fin financial collapse.

Georgia (48:32): Wow.

Adam (48:32): But it's, I mean, also Australia's, economy moved on from that point where, wool became much less significant. And obviously one of the, one of the big successes for Australia through the nineties and two thousands has been mining industry and other, and then obviously more tech coming on online. Um, but, but that's a, like, I just, I find that fascinating that and the numbers involved as well.

Georgia (48:54): You do realise I will be asking you for sources on this.

Adam (48:57): Yeah. Yeah.

Georgia (48:57): So many. This is amazing. Thank you for enriching my day.

Adam (49:03): There we go.

Georgia (49:04): I

Adam (49:04): There's—

Georgia (49:04): I, wow. I have so many thoughts. I'm like. Giddy with learning, but also like, that's tragic, but also why do these stories?

Adam (49:14): But but it happens. It happens all the time, right? And it, and in farming, like there are loads of practises internationally. It is, it is a problem for developing economic, for developing economies anywhere that farmers end up being paid less over time because you get super farms, which are able to farm at scale and therefore you're not able to, smaller farmers, you're not able to keep up with the pricing. Uh, you have supermarkets forcing prices down. And what happens is often governments step into just prop up an industry slightly, which is important, particularly also for, for food security. If we're talking about food farming. Because you, because it's a national issue that you want to be able to produce and secure your own food. You also have an enormous industry that you just don't want to go under. Like governments prop up, the auto industry and car industry, there are all sorts of industries that governments choose to just backstop from times to time. Perfectly reasonable policy decision. But then, like, it's just fascinating for me that it hits a turning point—

Georgia (50:16): Quarter of the world supply of wool owned by the Australian government as a, what? That's—

Adam (50:21): Well, I think it's a quarter of the years now. The place I might have got that mixed up is, it may be today's total. I'm, I'm worried that I'm suddenly conflating like today's total wool production versus like, what was the total wool production in 1991? But the numbers aren't gonna be a long way off. And it's like, it's a colossal amount of wool.

Georgia (50:42): Well, you've been transparent about that, and once you provide your sources, you've got nothing to worry about. Um, sorry, that sounded way more threatening than I'd intended it to.

Adam (50:51): No, I think it's perfectly reasonable for level of threat.

Georgia (50:54): I mean, I mean, people make mistakes. Like I, the other week, I talked about India and, craft and being the largest employer in India, or the largest employing sector and then I was looking that up and saw something that said it was actually the second largest employer, so not the largest. I am coming now to issue that correction to say that people make mistakes. Um, should we—

Adam (51:21): Should we have an errata episode at one point as well?

Georgia (51:23): Ah, maybe. Yeah. Yeah, we should. That would be fun.

Adam (51:25): I mean, in true academic style, that's what we should, we need to call it—

Georgia (51:28): Errata story. Thank you so much for telling us that.

Adam (51:33): I think it's time for your repairability.

Georgia (51:35): Well, repairability, I mean, this other consideration with sustainability and intention. When you buy something, thinking about the repairability of the item. And increasingly, when most of our sort of consuming economy is built to ensure that people keep buying stuff less and less things are made with the capacity to be repaired. I dunno, sometimes it could even feel deliberate, you could look at some tech. when it's deliberately made in this sort of like, fused way, where it's all already glued and welded together, so you can't get in it. And if you do, then it invalidates your warranty or whatever else. You can't repair things. You end up going back to the seller and you buy a new one. YL18 – Compilef Audio: Mm-hmm.

Georgia (52:16): And that is tragic for when we think about sustainability. And so one of the really important things about, thinking about the UN's sustainable development goals, all that kind of stuff is actually considering, okay, how can we design something and make something differently so that it will extend its, its long-term life and that would massively reduce its carbon because it is not just about making, getting something that is well made in the first place, but is it well made in a way that will facilitate repair. You know, we often will think of in textiles, visible mending. I love that visible mending is becoming like a thing where people are almost proudly, deliberately showing that they've mended something.

Adam (52:55): Yeah.

Georgia (52:56): In a bright way. I just got some of my summer clothes out and I found one of my jumpers where I did this big visible mend on it, and it feels, it feels really nice. It feels like a, a cool—

Adam (53:06): I, my, I knitted a hat for my dad and he says that he has got no idea how these holes appeared in it and that it, for me it absolutely looks like moth damage. He's, he's assuring me it isn't, 'cause I think he knows that he'd never get anything knitted again if there were moths. But yeah, I playfully mended that with all sorts of different colours and textures and like these i chords that came off and reattached like a and i love just playing with that.

Georgia (53:29): Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a pair of jeans that I bought. This was in 2018, I think.

Adam (53:34): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (53:35): The options and choice in the UK was still not very good for me then. And I found like just the perfect pair of jeans, in American Eagle, when I was visiting for Christmas. And I wore them until they were all the seams were snapping, snapping, snapping. And I kept doing those invisible repairs on them, like really lovely abstract, big, bold shapes. And then the day that they finally gave out, I was in the kitchen and I was waiting for someone to come and fix the internet actually. And just before Dima went out the door to work, I was, leaning up to get something. And I hadn't even realised the whole of the back seam right down my bum had completely split. And I didn't feel it. Like I didn't even notice 'cause it's like a nice light pair of jeans. Not least 'cause I'd worn them for bloody years at that point. And so thankfully Dima saw this before I had the broadband guy come and I would've just been like, hi. Yeah, do you want a cup of tea? And then turning around and just had this, it was my entire bottom was exposed. And that was the point at which it was like, Hmm. Can't really sew these up anymore. And the next time I went to the US I bought two pairs of them and I still wear them. They're my two pairs of jeans.

Adam (54:48): I've got a, I've got a story for you here. Oh my goodness. I don't know whether to share this. I'm gonna share this story with you, Georgia. Okay. And then we are gonna, we're gonna work out whether or not it's gonna get shared afterwards.

Georgia (54:57): Okay.

Adam (54:58): When I was a consultant as a young lad in my twenties, there was a time where exactly the same thing I was working in a factory. So my job as a consultant, I was a production engineering consultant. My job was to go into factories and help them produce more stuff.,

Georgia (55:15): Shame.

Adam (55:17): Hey, look, it was, I mean, it was an interesting mix of stuff. Like I worked, I worked in ceramics factories, I worked in ice cream factories. I worked in, I worked in brick factories—

Georgia (55:25): This is cool.

Adam (55:26): As well.

Georgia (55:26): Wow.

Adam (55:26): So yeah, I did all sorts of stuff. One of these places, once we had a client meeting with the, chief executive and. So I was getting ready to go out and have a chat, and I bent over to change my shoes, going from one environment into another, and exactly that same thing happened. So my trousers ripped from the very, the, exactly where you're talking about, like all through the seat that just came completely undone. And I'm standing there and I've got a white coat on, but I'm a, I have to take it off to go to the next place on. So at that point, I put my shoes back on to go back into the environment where I can go back to my office, I lock the door. I take my trousers around my ankles and I staple up the seat of the trousers. I pull the trousers back up, and then I go to the meeting with the chief executive and I sit with staples in my bottom.

Georgia (56:28): That's incredible.

Adam (56:29): And then obviously the meeting finished and I got off site relatively quickly. I'm afraid. My mending skills were a stapler at that point. Not anything more—

Georgia (56:39): Really does demonstrate the importance of textile repairability.

Adam (56:44): I don't know if I would've had time, like I was pushed for time. I'm quite proud of being able to on the fly, so to speak.

Georgia (56:52): Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

Adam (56:52): Like

Georgia (56:53): You engineered yourself out of that one.

Adam (56:54): Yeah, that was, and, yeah, I was—

Georgia (56:57): Especially with a suit, it would be hard to do a repair. You wouldn't necessarily want like a visible mend if it was all the way up the seat of the trousers. So I'm not accusing you of that.

Adam (57:05): It wasn't fancy suit. Like they had to look like nice trousers, but also like these were, in a way, it was like you had to be practical because we were around...

Georgia (57:14): Yeah. Yeah, I get you—

Adam (57:16): Machinery.

Georgia (57:16): This is making me think of my dad, He's a retired, design technology teacher. Um, now paints spoons in a cutlery factory and he's on the go. He's, he's doing a lot of woodwork and metal and, pottering about with the chickens and stuff. And for years and years and years, he's worn like American style work wear.

Adam (57:38): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (57:39): Like Dickies jeans and stuff like that. And like filson jacket, like the brown one. And then in the last couple of years that's become like trendy streetwear.

Adam (57:48): Yeah.

Georgia (57:48): And everyone to me now looks like my father. Um, because it's, it's so weird. Like, I'll be walking down the street "They're wearing Dickies and that's my dad's jacket that he's always worn. And it's, it's so bizarre to me that's become like the trendy thing. And you see it in windows of these fancy trainer shops and all this kind of stuff. And it's like you're dressed like my dad, my sort of country, country dad who... he goes to the supermarket with a, with a wicker basket.

Adam (58:17): Amazing.

Georgia (58:18): I know he's, he's a glorious man. He's coming to visit soon in Cambridge, and uh, he asked ahead of the visit, he said, "do I need smart clothes or, or can I come as me self?"

Adam (58:28): Oh,

Georgia (58:29): And he meant can he wear his dungarees the whole time.

Adam (58:33): That's hilarious.

Georgia (58:34): Yeah. So I've, I dunno, making sustainable intentional choices is good. And it can show up in all kinds of ways. Um, and I'm sorry that you had to staple your bum back together. Um, my dad doesn't have to do that in his Dickies jeans. Um, that was the point of me bringing up my dad's thing.

Georgia (58:52): Repairability. Yes. This weekend, I realised my Kobo e-reader has broken.

Adam (58:57): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (58:58): When I bought it was thinking, I've been wondering about any reader for a long time. I do a lot of reading. I find it like being able to customise the font of things is really helpful in my dyslexia, finally decided to buy this e-reader. I went with a Kobo because one of the big reasons was because it had, relative to other e-readers had a high, repairability score.

Adam (59:18): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (59:19): And also was open source. So the books weren't gonna be tied into Kindle or Amazon.

Adam (59:23): Into their ecosystem.

Georgia (59:24): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you could, download the books as an epub that wasn't locked in. Yeah, it was six out of 10 for the repairability score relative to I think a score of like two for a Paper White Kindle. Realised at some point last week, I think I've, I'm very new to having these kinds of like fancy iReady devices and I totally dropped it at some point and then looked at it and there's lines down the screen and it's my fault for not being careful enough with it, but I'm gonna need to repair it. Straight away. I knew, oh, at least there's that option. I don't even have to send it away. I can literally buy it, an authorised good part that I can fix at home, because that was something they set up with I fix it.

Adam (00:03): So now you've got a great reason to go out to Kobo and say, Hey, do you wanna sponsor our podcast?

Georgia (00:07): I suppose Yeah. Love Kobo.

Adam (00:10): But I, but I say to everyone, I ever make anything knitted for that, it is 100% repairable and as long as I live, I will repair it.

Georgia (00:18): Aw.

Adam (00:18): But because it's, because I think it's important and also like when, if it's something you're proud of, like you can, things are basically infinitely repairable if they're knitted or I guess crocheted, I presume it's—

Georgia (00:31): Yeah,

Adam (00:31): You can, you can repair crocheted, like you can repair knitting.

Georgia (00:34): On a recent video of mine. Someone put something out about, when you do men's socks, make sure that you a matching composite yarn because if you don't, the socks could just like completely shrink and go AWOL when you do the repair on them. And she said she'd been burned by that a few times. So I do, I'm sorry, I dunno who the name, the name of the person it was. I tend to save back a little bit of yarn when I knit socks and then would repair it with that one. But, yeah, I hadn't actually considered that on a small item like that, you could really pucker it up if the whole thing was in a super wash and then suddenly you put like a little bit of shrunken wool on it or something.

Adam (01:16): I feel like you could always cut the repair out and repair it again.

Georgia (01:19): Oh yeah, absolutely. But it's just to save you the erk of it the first time.

Adam (01:23): My vibe would be to do it, screw it up, learn from it, and do it again.

Georgia (01:27): Oh yeah, exactly. Exactly. But then maybe that's 'cause you're a tinkerer.

Adam (01:29): Which brings us onto a topic which we absolutely don't have time for, Georgia.

Georgia (01:33): Yes. No, we don't have time for gender and tinkering, which is another conversation we will have at some point, which basically is that, a study in computing showed that female participants, had you are like clutching your fists on your pen going, ah—

Adam (01:48): Which, I don't think you should go into it Georgia because if you start reading it out we're gonna have—

Georgia (01:52): To discuss it. Female participants came out with a lower self-efficacy score than male participants when tinkering. And I do wonder sometimes if that could account for why women are sometimes a little bit like, "ah", with um, tech when they need to repair it and people are like, just get involved. Just fix it. So, 'cause when I found out I needed to fix my Kobo I was like, oh God, can I do that? Should I get Deema to do it? And I was like, I can absolutely put a screen on something. I do fine detailed work all the time, but my instinct was like, ah, can I do this? So that's what I will say and I will link the study 'cause it's a very cool study and, it's on end user debugging in programming. And uh, thank you for that time.

Adam (02:31): You're very, you're very welcome.

Georgia (02:32): I'll cut so much of the whisk story I promise so much of it will go, it'll be like a sentence, maybe more than a sentence, quite a bit more than a sentence, but it will not be 20 minutes. I promise. I'm so sorry.

Adam (02:43): Alright. I'm just...

Georgia (02:44): What are we on?

Adam (02:45): I'm we an hour and a half of recording at this point.

Georgia (02:47): You see, I thought that said 57?

Adam (02:51): No, it's, it's, it's—

Georgia (02:52): 87.

Adam (02:53): 87 minutes Georgia. That's why I'm trying to finish this and wrap it up.

Georgia (02:57): Okay. Alright then. okay. Well, thank you for listening to your library podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode or any of our others, please do send it to your friends. Could you envisage or imagine someone, someone that you know isn't a listener but could enjoy it being a listener?

Adam (03:09): I mean, once we've got the sustainability stuff about Super Wash, there are a few people that I really want to send this to as a, like, you have to listen to this and understand how I think about this.

Georgia (03:18): Mm-hmm.

Adam (03:18): Because I've tried and I've tried to make reels about it, but you just don't have the time and space to talk about it on Instagram.

Georgia (03:24): There are some people I want to send the forever whisk story to because I think that they personally know of my plight and they will find it entertaining to know that I publicly discussed that.

Adam (03:33): I also know what I'm getting you for Christmas.

Georgia (03:35): Don't, don't. No, that's really stressful.

Adam (03:39): Oh, so okay. I promise you, I will never buy you a whisk. Is that better?

Georgia (03:43): Thank you, that's so much better. Thank you. Please never buy me a whisk. Thank you.

Adam (03:47): Thank you for listening to the Yarn Library podcast. That's where we got to. Thank you for listening.

Georgia (03:51): Just calm down. Okay.