A Rose by Any Other Name

This is the current state of my Hemlock Blanket, design by Jared Flood. The yarn is Caron's Simply Soft Paints in the Sticks and Stone colorway; very masculine. I decided to knit it in an acrylic yarn for my grandson-to-be; for some reason, my kids don't want to hand wash baby things. Go figure. The colorway is quite nice; in fact, it's as nice as many an indie-dyed skein I've knitted. The problem is that it's acrylic. Not that I have anything against acrylic yarns, except that they shed, pill and look generally crappy in pretty short order, and I can see a little of that already happening in the center of the blanket I haven't knit with acrylics for many a year, but I remember this being the problem with acrylics back in their heyday. I had hoped man made fibers had advanced more, apparently, than they have. But it may be yarn specific; I knit the Baby Surprise Jacket below for the same grandson in a Vanna's Choice print that is surprisingly cushy, lofty and smooth.

I remember making a top-down pullover six or seven years ago out of Lion Brand Homespun. The sweater wasn't finished before it started to look like monkey fur. So answer me this: if yarn can be spun from bamboo, corn, milk byproducts, soy and petroleum (you do know that's where many "man made" fibers come from, right?) why can't we come up with manufactured yarns that don't fuzz?