So I said this in a whole reply over in my Facebook discussion group, Textile Talk with Abby Franquemont, and I'm going to reproduce it here as a thread because... because.

Are you ready?

I'll try to supply some background. [1/23]

English-speaking industrialized world yarn people LOVE things/techniques/styles/patterns/etc that come from other cultures. A lot of that love is truly sincere admiration.

However, even when that admiration is sincere, it can be not exactly awesome. [2/23]

One reason: appropriation. Let's say there's a traditional cultural weaving pattern and it has deep significance. Someone visiting the culture thinks it's pretty, so adapts it for a sweater pattern, which she then sells and makes a bunch of money, none of which goes to... [3/23]

...the culture whose pattern it is. Additionally, within the culture of origin, the pattern means things, has significance, isn't just pretty, but MEANS THINGS, the same way that, say, wearing a lab coat and a nametag that says "Dr. Jones" means something in a hospital. [4/23]

Nobody in the industrialized world thinks it would be cool to walk into a hospital in a lab coat with a nametag claiming to be a doctor, if you are not in fact a doctor.

So even if you aren't making money from selling your appropriated pattern, it could be uncool. [5/23]

Anyway, speaking of hospitals, when my dad was on his deathbed in one, I had this argument with him, and he bequeathed me the crusade since he was dying. He also warned me it was hopeless, because the ship had sailed and basically, people in the scene don't care about facts. [6/

This is relevant because the way the term I'm about to talk about entered the English-speaking yarn enthusiast's lexicon was a bunch of people leaping to conclusions based on the title of a 1-page article he wrote in 1992, about a trick he saw our comadre Benita do in 1977. [7/23

The article: FRANQUEMONT, Ed, Spin-Off Summer 1992, p. 106: An Andean Plying Technique.

You read that right: it was a single page, maybe 400 words, with an illustration that demonstrated the clever little yarn trick.

One page.

[8/23]

All of a sudden, people all over the English-speaking yarn scene were talking about "Andean Plying."

And what they meant was "that trick written up in that one page article."

But people started to jump to a conclusion about the trick.

[9/23]

What conclusion?

That this trick -- a specific means of winding a bracelet type yarn package on your hand so you could control the yarn and get at the far end -- was the most critical and essential thing to know about how All Yarn Is Plied In The Andes All The Time.

[10/23]

So this also gets to fetishization.

Because some folks were like "Oh how cool, look at this exotic thing these noble savages are doing with yarn," basically.

Even well-meaning people can be guilty of fetishizing something they view as exotic or "other." And...

[11/23]

there's a degree to which the branding effect of saying something came from a specific culture (even if, in fact, it DOES come from that culture) can contribute to this fetishizing effect & be capitalized on in ways that come back to appropriation, as discussed upthread.

[12/23]

So then we got to a point where folks who didn't actually know anything about spinning yarn in the Andes were spreading a myth that this yarn management trick some people use sometimes to deal with one specific situation that commonly occurs when plying... [13/23

...is the canonical way in which all yarn in the Andes is readied for plying via traditional means.

But it actually has very little to do with plying. It's just a yarn management trick. My dad never imagined a title he may not even have chosen could have this effect.

[14/23]

Anyway, as he lay dying, I sat there with him and said "But Ed, now you're dying, and you still haven't set the record straight about this misunderstanding."

I mean there were other reasons I was mad at him for dying, but this one was totally on the list. [15/23]

He said y'all didn't care.

I thought you did. That you would, if you just knew the truth.

It's true -- I was once that idealistic, which seems improbable in hindsight, but indeed, I was.

Now I know it's a small, limited subset of y'all who care about facts.

[16/23]

So what are the problems with just continuing to use this term with roots in a misunderstanding?

I am so glad you asked.

First, there's the stuff about fetishizing and appropriating.

Second, there's the element of confusion. [17/23]

For example, I'm a spinner and weaver living in the Andes, working in the Andes, with the roots of my skill and training being here. I'm the second generation of textile researchers writing for English-speaking audience about what people here really, truly, actually do. [18/23]

And tomorrow, I'm going to teach an online class about how people ply yarn in the traditional workflow, and why it works that way, and you know what I can't do?

I can't call it "Andean Plying."

Because too many people think those two words mean something they don't. [19/23]

The real story, the real workflow, the full scope of all the techniques? All of that is FAR MORE INTERESTING, and even more useful and more relevant, than the simple yarn management trick to deal with an occasional minor problem.

[20/23]

And Indigenous spinners in the Andes are honestly kinda horrified to learn that their English speaking peers in the more industrialized world are so confused about what actually is done here. Most of them hope I can set the record straight.

I hope so too, but... [21/23]

I don't honestly have high hopes. I've been trying for kind of a while, and yet, misunderstanding persists.

I even published in the same place my dad did, 23 years later: Spin-Off, Summer 2015.

Somewhere my dad's laughing and saying he told me so, by the way.

[22/23]

I hope this little story has been food for thought, on a few levels. It felt like the time to tell it on twitter. Or at least A time to tell it on twitter.

The end! [23/23]

Oh yeah, so what DO I call it?

Making a plying bracelet.

Because it also isn’t actually plying, it’s a yarn management trick that can be used for a variety of things.

Also there’s more than one way to do it (TMTOWTDI, as we used to say as perl nerds)