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Three Letters Re: The Fabric of Our Lives

James:
Thanks to Jeanan for raising a very important but easily overlooked point. It's amazing how we take for granted having drawers full of clothes!

Curiously, though, I do know folks who know how to spin thread and weave cloth. Some of the ladies in a Dark Age re-enactment group that I'm a member of perform demonstrations of these very skills. I have seen them work with raw wool, spin thread, and demonstrate weaving on period looms. Granted that the Dark Ages are a little too primitive (no spinning wheels, for example) but it does point to a partial solution, namely consulting with re-enactment groups from, say, the 18th and 19th centuries. Of course, very few do this sort of thing full time (usually more of a hobby) but some are nevertheless quite passionate about period crafts, and probably possess some useful information. Also, museums like Colonial Williamsburg might be able to point you to instructions and so forth.

One comment on "going back to the Indian method of tanning hides for clothing." That is technically Stone Age, not Dark Age. Would that we could be fortunate enough to only fall back to the Dark Ages! - G.F.L.

JWR,
Thank you for your huge contribution towards the preparedness of us all. I thought I would share a darning trick I grew up seeing my mom using. Instead of finding a darning ball, a standard incandescent light bulb works fine. It keeps the form well and is cheap, effective, and easy to get hold of. A reader in his teens. - Callum

Mr. Rawles,
In regards to the readers letter about making fabric/yarns for clothing, here is an interesting machine most people have never seen: A hand crank sock knitting machine. Extremely interesting to see in person, it does still require a tad bit of hand knitting to finish the socks. American ingenuity at its best. - D. Fish

JWR Replies: Knitting machines do work. However, as The Memsahib learned with her Bulky Knitting Machine, they are very sensitive to variations in yarn thickness and texture. Only the most advanced hand spinners develop the uniformity of yarn thickness required to feed a knitting machine without jamming it. Therefore, I only recommend knitting machines for someone who has set aside a large quantity of skeins of commercially made yarn varieties that you've proven work without trouble with your particular machine. (They can be very finicky.) In a short term disaster situation, a footlocker full of socks purchased inexpensively on closeout may make more sense, for most preppers.

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