I have a confession to make, I use Red Heart yarn. (Gasp) It started out as a cost saving measure when my children were young. Hu feed the baby or buy that lovely silk blend. I found out as the children grew acrylic yarn had other advantages. first of all they could actually play in their hand made cloths. I have three boys and two girls with that many kids it was impossible to get anything clean and down right insane to think they would take the time to remove that pair of mittens before making mud castles. As the children grew and learned to wash their own cloths I never had the heart wrenching experience of finding a hand knit sweater shrunken down to Barbi size.
My children are all grown up now and mostly moved out of the house. The exception being the occasional boomerang kid that comes home after a major disaster. Currently the oldest is in transition. I just got the youngest out about three months ago. So now I'm almost an empty nester, and I still use acrylic. Money is not so much of a problem anymore and if I really wanted to I can afford the skeins of fancy yarn. Ahh but what can I say I've become a yarn slob, I like not having to wash wool blankets and wait for a week while they air dry, and on the Oregon coast it could mold long before it actually drys. I like not having to worry that the dog is walking on the afghan and I really like taking my creations to the park throwing them down on the ground and spilling picnic food all over them. On accident of course, I don't like stand there and slide the potato salad and hot dog on to the blanket.
Every once in awhile I run across my nemesis the yarn snob. That happened recently at a convention I was attending. I was happily knitting away walking around all the wonderful vendor booths when a lady stopped me and complemented me on my stitches then she went on to say that it was a shame I hadn't chosen a better quality yarn for my project. That choking sound you heard was just me biting my tongue. I didn't have the heart to dispel her fantasy or to tell her that my acrylic blanket would out last the next ice age or that my 150 pound mastiff mix could roll all over it and all I had to do to get rid of that doggy smell is to toss it in the washer and dryer and it would be ready for use in about two hours. Now don't get me wrong I do love the feel of a nice fiber, I just don't see the sense of making something you can't really use. I have wool and cotton and silk and all the other fancy fibers and they get used for some projects. Any thing that I plan on using all the time gets acrylic. I'm not going to go tramping through the woods in silk and I'm not going to try to wash the dishes with an acrylic dish cloth. I choose my yarn according to the project, and if that means acrylic then so be it I'll still love the thing I made.