A new fiber word

My mother sent me this definition today:

haptic   \HAP-tik\   adjective
    *1 : relating to or based on the sense of touch
     2 : characterized by a predilection for the sense of touch

Example sentence:
     Mark could tell the different kinds of yarn apart purely by haptic clues.

Sounds good to me, although my deciding sense is actually smell. I can tell 100% merino from 80% merino/20% cashmere by the faint whiff of goat, and linen smells different from hemp from cotton from silk, etc. And weird as it may sound, if you roll a fiber between your fingers up against your ear, you can hear a difference between mammals and bugs and plants, oh my!

Comments

[Charleen]

I'll have to test my sense of (fiber)hearing. I usually go with my nose!

[elka]

WHAT!?! Your a spinning, dye-ing, and knitting goddess and you can tell fiber by smell, touch and audio wise? It's official I am just not worthy of reading your blog

[Janice in GA]

Fascinating! I confess it's never occurred to me to listen to my yarn. I like to smell yarn (confirmed yarn sniffer here), but I've never tried to tell the fiber composition by nose. I'll give it a try!