Homespun

I keep reading books where people (usually women, pertaining to their skirts) are wearing "homespun."

Dear Fantasy Authors:

Before the industrial revolution, everyone wore homespun. Even queens. Who often did plenty of spinning themselves, actually, because all women were expected to spin.

Sincerely,
yeah yeah whatever

This is an example of writers parroting what they've seen in other books, without understanding the significance of the word. Not only that, but as a spinner myself (for a decade now), I resent the implication that homespun goods are inferior to mill-spun. Come over to my house and I'll let you drool over the wool and thread I've spun. And I'm not even all that good a spinner, certainly not a professional.

More on this in a week, I'm sure, when Trunk Novels releases Weaver's Shroud, because it's all about spinning. Well, spinning is involved. So are ghosts and necromancers and gods. But the spinning is pretty darn interesting.