A new icord machine has come into my world, this one with a bigger opening, which means I am about to have the very prettiest charging cables you ever did see.*

And I need to know, am I the only one sort of entranced by this? Because if I’m not, I sort of have a small scheme that is…manageable without an icord machine but even more fun with one that I kiiiiiind of want to talk about.

Psst, if you want to watch me crank it, there’s a video up on this patreon post over here (it’s free, anyone can watch it)!

*If you are concerned this will cause me or my surroundings to burst into flames, please allow me to allay your concerns! Couple of things:

• First, your charger cable should not be getting hot. If it is, something, somewhere is very wrong, and you should figure out which bit of that is misbehaving.
• Second, charger cables aren’t like lamp cables or extension cords, you do not have all the juice of your whole house running through them, they are muuuuuuuch lower voltage (that’s part of the reason charging cables should never ever ever get hot).
• Third, wool is damn near miraculous in many ways, one of which is its flame resistant characteristics. It doesn’t ignite until it gets to about 575C(ish) (as opposed to 225C(ish) for cotton or somewhere in that 425-500C(ish) range for synthetic fibers like polyester or nylon). In addition, wool has a higher limiting oxygen index (the minimum concentration of oxygen needed for something to burn) than most other textiles. This is part of the reason that wool is self extinguishing (meaning if you take the source of ignition away, it puts itself out, unlike things like plastic or synthetic fibers or paper or any of the other things your charging cables are laying on right this very moment). And even if it does burn, it turns to ash, which creates an insulating layer between the burnt bits and the rest of it (rather than turning into a pool of melted, flaming plastic goo ready to spread destruction to other surfaces). Wool has in fact often been used for fire blankets or protective clothing precisely because it is so fire resistant.

So while you absolutely do not have to do this if it makes you uncomfortable, I have done enough reading about the structural and chemical properties of wool and the cool ways they work to make it nigh on dragon-proof to feel like it’s perfectly safe to cover a low voltage charging cord in it. I honestly suspect that a length of cable with wool around it would probably be harder to catch and slower to burn than one without, and the next time I have a cable break I may well try exactly this experiment.

So for now, I’m going to reassure everyone that I really, truly did check. And unless you have actual professional experience related to stuff catching on fire (like you’re a fire fighter or you do UL product testing or something else cool like that) or have helpful citations to share that call into doubt the flame resistant properties of wool, I’m going to ask that you not leave comments along the lines of ‘well, I’m just worried about it on general principle (and also I assume you haven’t thought about it), so I’m going to mention it just in case.’ I feel like the internet makes it suuuuuuper easy to do that (trust me, every time I see someone post a picture with a cat and yarn I want to explain about how yarn is super dangerous for cats)! But it occasionally gets kind of exhausting to be on the receiving end of that (and the last time I posted a video about this on IG it got a zillion views, which mean a staggering number of folks popping by to ‘helpfully’ tell me incorrect information), so I’m putting up a preemptive disclaimer on this one)!