fabric recycling: the quest

You've likely seen the headlines about the oversupply of fast fashion and its result that generally, nobody wants your old clothes donations anymore. There are exceptions of course - true vintage stuff, that's decades old and in good condition; rare and particularly valuable, or useful, things like name brands, leather, real wool sweaters, feather down, sports gear and swimwear, plus size clothing, etc, since thrift and charity shops do keep selling stock, it's just that they get a hundred times the donations they can use. And the Red Cross's disaster relief continually ships warm winter clothes, both donated ones in decent condition and things knitted for the purpose, around the world (other clothes too, but the warm winter clothes are a minority of donations I suppose, so they accept them and ship them year round; and they were the only clothes that we collected to ship internationally in the Red Cross secondhand store where I worked a couple of years ago).

Well, anyway, this means there's a limited amount of old clothes worth donating from our household, so I've been thinking about ways to recycle fabric myself recently. I read up on it a bit, and while you can compost natural fibers, it's not especially efficient. Making it into strips to crochet, knit, or braid into rugs and the like is a tradition followed by my grandmother and great-grandmother, and so are scrap quilts; but not all fabrics are suitable for that.

I got around this week to going through MIL's clothes finally, and after rescuing nightshirts, tshirts, and socks for waxjism, and diverting two large moving boxes' worth to be donated to the Red Cross as they are plus sized and in good condition, I'm still left with a pile of fabric that mostly isn't capable of being ripped into strips that could be knitted or crocheted, nor sewn into patches or quilts. At least in Finland none of it will go to a landfill, but on the other hand that's because they burn the majority of garbage (and convert it to electricity), so I'd prefer to minimize the amount of plastic going there (and of course, there are lots of plastics that aren't recyclable, which includes most of the fibers that make up clothes).

H&M will accept your old clothes from any brand, but it was recently reported that they're landfilling or burning the majority of fabric they collect this way and even new returns from their stores. Other shops intermittently collect things like old sheets and old jeans, but I keep these for patches and sewing projects myself anyway. I'm not aware of any place around that's actually collecting assorted fabric for recycling. Last year's letter from the Turku municipal garbage handling service that explains the categories for recycling indicated there was a place you could take cloth recycling, and when we were moving we tried to go there, but when we followed the map the indicated business didn't have... any... signs... or business... at the indicated address, so either they're top secret and want to discourage visitors even though according to the letter visiting them was the only way to get rid of your cloth recycling, or they moved or went out of business.

What should I do with old tights? Old synthetic undergarments not nice enough to be resold by a thrift store? Old clothes with stains or holes? I can't just start saving literally everything under the theory that I can use it in an art project some day, like my mom. I mean, yes, a sufficiently creative person can eventually use anything in an art project, but I don't have that kind of storage space, and I don't really do that many wildly creative recycled art projects...

I know the old tights can be used to make various things, but since I don't need to make any fairy wing costumes or potpourri sachets, I'm not sure what I could personally use them for...

Oh, right, and also, you can make paper! That could be fun. But I'm not sure if you can use synthetic fibers for that.

Nero Wolfe: The Golden Spiders and Might as Well Be Dead

If he intended the glance he shot at me to be complimentary, I'd hate to have him give me one of disapproval.

( Selected lines from The Golden Spiders )

(Actually #22, before The Black Mountain. I read it out of order)

This was an unusually action-packed and interesting plot, with a lot of humor and an extended appearance of Saul and the gang; but, uh, I was a little wigged out by... the... torture. I mean the book's attitude was very "This is totally MILD torture if you do it right!!!" but... mild... torture?? It was shocking and jarring. I suppose in the early 1950s torture was like... just a generally accepted element of being Tough that you might legitimately use when you had a moral right to some information or other - or that's the impression the book gave about it (as long as it was only light torture!). But, obviously, from the modern-day standpoint, that is both (morally/ethically) insane and pointless, because it's well-known (though not to the CIA apparently, nor the Bush administration in general, nor most American cop-propaganda crime mystery shows...) that torture is not a reliable way to obtain information because the victims are incentivized more to say anything at all and/or anything they think you want to hear than to specifically tell the truth. ...So I'd have to say this novel is a mixed bag. The torture isn't a gross-out, and the victim has just been torturing one of Archie's pals himself, but it seems reasonable enough to simply never read any books where the protagonist is going to consciously and willingly do it. But on the other hand, if you just redacted a short section of one scene there'd be no torture, and this would then unquestionably be one of the first Wolfe novels I would recommend. It should also come with a second trigger warning for the death of a child character. Of course it's a murder mystery and all, but that also did surprise me.

It was one of those rooms that call for expert dodging to get anywhere.

( Selected lines from Might as Well Be Dead )

A great premise. They undertake to find a long-lost son for someone, having only his intials to go on, but quickly learn he's just been convicted of murder and they have to clear him (against his will, because he thinks the woman he loves did it). Aside from this, the murder revolves around the way telephones worked before answering machines were invented - commercial answering services and ladies at switchboards and all that, which has a lot of interest by itself. Also as a bonus, Stout kills off Johnny Keems - the first recurring character killed off in the series, so it raises the stakes quite a bit.