Getting It Off My Chest

This has been bugging me for a week now so I'm going to have a little rant.  I took a class last weekend which involved sock-making.  My friend and I both had self-striping yarns for our socks, mine being a Regia that looks like this:

Pretty, n'est-ce pas?  

Well, the instructor seemed to feel it necessary to comment during one of her talks that this type of yarn "offended" her.  Obviously she is of the hand-dyed, hand-spun, hand-everything ilk.  More power to you.  I, however, have more eclectic tastes and if I feel like knitting my socks with shredded plastic bags I will.  I was very offended by that remark, especially since she had been around the class and seen what everyone was working with.  She made a similar comment about machine knitting.  I really dislike this kind of snobbery where if you didn't raise the sheep yourself in your organic garden, shear it, clean and card it, spin it, knit it on needles carved by aboriginals in Timbuktu you are not quite a "real" knitter. 

I knit because I love it.  It relaxes me, satisfies me, soothes me, boosts my ego, entertains me....I could go on and on but you get my point.  I love to knit.

Sometimes I work with luxury yarns like cashmere (Sweatermaker) ~ Piano Mitts by Catherine Ryan:

or bamboo (Sirdar Flirt) ~ Coraline by Ysolda Teague:

or hemp (HempWol) ~ Amelia by Laura Chow:

and sometimes I like to knit socks with a good sturdy self-striping (so it looks pretty) yarn.  So there!

Oh, and one more thing ~ don't be complaining that the "endless garter stitch" or "rows and rows of stockinette" drove you crazy in a pattern.  Did you not look at it before you started and see that the entire front, back and sleeves were garter/stockinette?  Kind of like complaining about the rain in the Pacific Northwest.  Okay, I do that a lot.