Posts Tagged ‘comforters’
What were you doing Christmas Eve?
What an interesting Christmas Eve we experienced here in the upper Midwest in 2009. It was definitely a white Christmas and we spent the evening without electricity and ate cold food and we burned candles for light.
The thing that got us through the evening and into the night was a lot of blankets and throws, including down throws and comforters. We woke up to electricity and opened gifts and read the Christmas story from the Bible.
Is Christmas a time that you want to be warm?
Christmas is at the beginning of winter on the calendar and that turns out to be the ideal time to buy a loved one or even yourself gifts to keep warm. The best gifts to do this are those that allow us to use keep cold air away from our bodies instead of warming the air, which costs money.
Down feather comforters or blankets may have a higher initial cost than buying fuel to heat the air, but it will be a wise investment. The comforter will keep you warm, which is the most important thing, but it can allow you to conserve fuel, especially at night.
Down comforters are practical in a bad economy
The holidays are upon us and Christmas gift giving will be harder than most of us have ever experienced. Practicality will be considered above luxury to make the best use of limited resources.
One gift that is practical and still luxurious is a goose down comforter. Comforters are good investments because they last for years and are natural insulators on long winter nights. Be sure to give the gift that will last this year; you will be loved for it.
Keeping down feathers inside of your comforter
The fabric used in making bedding that contains down needs to be downproof. There are a variety of fabrics that are used in down bedding, but whichever one is used must be constructed so that the fine down fibers cannot penetrate it.
Pacific Coast Feather Company uses BarrierWeave TM technology to produce goose down comforters with fabric that achieves this. This technology produces a finer, softer, and more durable fabric that is up to three times more leakproof than the standard requirement.
The supply and demand of down
Raw down and feather supplies are like commodities that are sensitive to supply and demand. Down bedding manufacturers make up only part of the demand along with the makers of down apparel and sleeping bags.
The supply and demand is affected by the needs of consumers and manufacturers, which cannot be reliably estimated. During a downturn in an economy for example, demand for more expensive down comforters would be less, even though humans have a need to keep themselves warm, but would turn possibly to cheaper synthetic materials.
Most goose down is from the Orient
Sixty-Five percent of the down produced in the world comes from Asia and most of the rest from Eastern Europe. Farmers generally will sell birds for meat and sell the down to brokers who sell the raw material to down and feather processors worldwide.
Processors prepare the raw material for the making of down feather pillows and comforters and other products. Supplies of the goose and duck down are usually greater around the time of the Chinese New Year because of higher consumption of the birds’ meat by consumers
The supply of duck exceeds that of goose
Another consideration when making a purchase of down comforters or pillows is the price of duck down versus goose down. One reason that duck is cheaper is that in the U.S. there is a perception that duck down is slightly inferior to goose down. A second reason is that there is a larger worldwide supply of duck, which far exceeds geese.
Goose down pillows and comforters will carry with them an inherent pride of ownership, which comes from the perception of being better and because of less abundant supply. For the money, if duck is the cheaper product and all other things are equal, it is probably the best buy for the obvious reason – price – and you may only be sacrificing the pride of ownership.