K1P1 - Click Click

Hello,

My name is bwings and I resolve to knit!

One of my 365 things for 2011 was to learn to knit. I went out last week on a mission for the appropriate supplies. Organic cotton yarn and bamboo knitting needles. I was surprised to find that the bamboo knitting needles did not cost me more than the plastic ones would have. Snatching up a set of bamboo needles I turned to examine my yarn options. I wasn't in a craft store and unfortunately there weren't many options. Given that I'm going to be making things for my daughter acrylic was the best option based on it's machine-washable quality. I grabbed up two large balls of acrylic yarn in two different shades of pink and proceeded on my merry way.

Given that I didn't find an eco-friendly yarn I thought of a way I could balance it out in my head. Simple, find a way to knit things out of some not-so eco-friendly material. Therefore expanding the life of the garbage and upcycling. Like using old tattered plastic bags as yarn and making a tote. But first I'd have to learn how to make yarn out of the plastic bags. That was easier than coming up with the idea. A quick search found not one but two sites with lovely ideas detailed for you. I'm sure I could find many more. I did some browsing and found a few more cute ideas. One of which was this portable yarn holder set-up using recycled containers.

So what about the question of eco-friendly yarn for next time? Another search a few days later found a few options.

• Repreve - by Unifi was once featured on the discovery channel. It's an innovative 100% recycled polyester yarn made from both post-consumer and post-industrial waste. There is a long list of brands that are already using the like-wool material in their clothing. 
• Blue Sky Alpaca's - Has a large variety of self-sustainable yarn such as Alpaca-silk as well as reycled and organic materials like organic cotton and recycled silk from saris. 
• Eco2Cotton - Produce yarn from recycling new, pre-consumer (post-industrial) cotton knit cuttings. These would be discarded during clothing design and are reprocessed and blended into fiber to be re-spun into yarn. According to their statistics a t-shirt only contains 60% of the cotton grown to produce it. The rest is tossed out on the cutting floor. 
• Cornucopia - Yarn made 100% from corn.
• Bam Boo - Yarn made with Bamboo
• Soy Silk - Yarn/Silk made with soy. 

For now I will work on my needlework and drop far few stitches before I invest in a more pro eco-friendly yarn.

Your friendly neighborhood hippie mom.