@cwebber

Then the employee at the next cutting counter over interrupts her and says "She can't use that, she's allergic. That's the whole point."

@dajb @cwebber

So few opportunities to pull out the "I'm literally an expert on this" card and I wasted a perfect one ... but that lady wasn't going to hear me and I just needed to buy some fabric so I could make clothes that didn't make me want to claw my skin off.

@vgarzareyna @cwebber

That hot, arid climate preserves so many things that otherwise just decompose! They almost certainly had knit fabrics elsewhere at the same time but Egypt is where is survives in the archaeological record.

@tkinias @cwebber

Exactly, this has been the bane of my existence. There are some "eco friendly" clothing manufacturers out there but in my experience those:

- Only make clothing for people who wear smaller standard sizes (no hope of having plus sizes, tall sizes, etc)

- Still use synthetic threads to sew everything together (which is what apparently set my allergies off this time)

- Often don't consider things like lining materials or decoration in their consideration of material content

@amd @cwebber

I think Clotho likes to mess with me a bit. I literally gave a talk on this twist of fate at a textile history conference last year. Especially since the allergy developed *after* I'd already finished my dissertation.

Here's the podcast episode we made from that outline: https://fossandcrafts.org/episodes/061-textile-historians-survival-guide.html