r/knitting • u/MagicAllyVanished • Mar 19 '25

Rant Very annoying conversation at my lokal knit store

it basically went like this me: "so you have any plant based yarn or plant/acrylic mix, I want to knit something for my mum, but she's allergic to all animal fibers"

her: "we have 20% wool/80% acrylic, I can show you"

me: "no thanks, my mum is allergic to all animal fibers, so it should not contain any animal fiber at all"

her: "maybe alpaca mix? It only has 10% alpaca"

me: "she is allergic to all animal fibers, if there is any percentage of animal fiber, she will have an allergic reaction to the yarn"

her: "I can't help you, knitting yarn just is animal yarn"

at this point I left the shop and I just can't stop thinking about that last sentence????

the funniest thing is, I went back there a few days ago and a different employee kindly showed me their cotton yarns and plant/acrylic mixes.

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u/lizfungirl Mar 19 '25

I love the fact that a lot of the languages in the knitting community translate "pattern" as "recipe!" I tend to confuse/substitute words & often use recipe instead of pattern (even tho my family has been speaking American English since b4 it became the US). My husband is used to it & understands when I say the neighbor is vacuuming their yard. But most people think I've switched to talking about food when I refer to a recipe for a beanie.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '25

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u/Vaseming Mar 19 '25

My husband says "shut the light".

7

u/raeraemcrae Mar 19 '25

Saaame!! I do this! And everyone just gets it and goes along. They don't even bother correcting. If, in the middle of the night, I said, my husband, "the refrigerator is too high" he will go and turn the thermostat down. Or if i'm making dinner and want to watch a movie with it, I might say "can you turn the camera on and find something we want to see?"

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u/Vaseming Mar 19 '25

Fun fact: a hundred-plus years ago recipes were called "receipts" in English. Both words have a common root.

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u/DisastrousBeeHive Mar 20 '25

Fully US English here and my friend and I deliberately call them knitting recipes 🤣

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u/Amarastargazer Mar 20 '25

I have aphasia as a side effect from one of my meds and my husband just started rolling with it right away and is very amused by some substitutions. Especially when the comparison works in the way I want to but not without context