The Three R's - Part 1

As I was preparing to write this post, I was thinking about what Sew Green is all about. Living ecologically, obviously. But there is a craft or creative element to the blog. So then I started thinking about one of the basic environmental tenets: reduce, reuse, recycle. This post and the next two will explore the three R's, with an emphasis on craft.


Every knitter has this problem. No, I'm not talking about lack of time or a tendency toward obsessive/compulsive behaviour. I'm talking about the stash. The contents of the stash fall into two categories: yarn that had to be bought because it was too gorgeous to pass up, and will be used for future projects and leftover yarn that is too long to throw out and may possibly be needed for something at some distant future date.

I'm pretty good about resisting new yarn, but I'm horrible when it comes to throwing out the scraps. Recently, when I was trying to find a bag to take to the grocery store and realized that they were all full of yarn, I decided that it was time to seriously reduce the stash.

So, here are a couple of my successes...

Snake from Jess Hutchinson's book (now sadly out of print) using leftover yarn from baby blankets. Almost done!

French press cozies using wool leftover from making toques.

And a bunch of suggestions...

• cat toys
• jewelry
• baby booties
• finger puppets
• aliens

How are you reducing your stash?

summer souvenirs

as summer
melts into autumn,
it's time for change.
i start putting away
my tank tops and sandals
and thinking of
corduroys and cardigans.
there's always something
a little sad about
summer ending.
like the last few days
of vacation before
you head home and back to work
(even though many of us
work right through summer).
perhaps it is a reminant of
our school days
years ago.

i remember
as september
would near
i would collect
rocks,
sand dollars,
and
sea urchin shells
at the water's edge.
my souvenirs
for another
summer gone by.
to hold those
relics in my hand
as the weather
cooled and
dusk came
fast
and
earlier
each evening.



as autumn nears
i like
to rearrange
and redecorate
my apartment.
put away flower vases.
arrange acorns
and
rocks
on the windowsill
or
in piles
in the garden.




there are many
creative
and beautiful ways
that artists
(and you too)
can use rocks
as decoration
in your own home.



Beautiful art rocks to buy:
* woven rocks by white forest pottery
* porcelain pebbles by Manos/Karin Eriksson
* pet rocks by stephanie congdon barnes.





Make your own felted rocks:
* Craftzine: How to make felted rocks
* DIY felted rock on DesignSponge
* Martha Stewart: felted rock paperweight
* see some here.

you can also
sew,
knit,
or crochet
your own covers.

i knitted covers
by knitting in the round
with simple
increases
and decreases...


i covered
all sizes of rocks.


then i put them
in the washing machine
in a delicates laundry bag
and washed them a few times
while doing my
weekly laundry.


you can mix
felted
and unfelted
rocks.


for more
inspiration,
check out
one of my favorite
blogs:
everyone needs
a rock.



enjoy
your rock.
enjoy autumn.

spin green

at first, spinning yarn may seem like an esoteric art. even as a knitter and crocheter, i can't say that i gravitated towards learning how to spin. it seemed very hippie-earth-mother to me. over the years i have become more interested in learning the fundamentals of the most basic materials. this is similar to a baker wanting to grind his/her own grain. to truly understand a material you must go back to the source. since i probably cannot get away with raising my own sheep on my patio in the middle of washington dc (don't think i haven't thought about it), the closest that i can get to the basics of fiber arts is spinning yarn.

recently i took a drop spindle class with a friend at my local yarn store. i wanted to share with you a few things i learned...

first, spinning yarn is harder than it looks.
it is easy to learn because it is a simple concept- spinning animals fibers to add strength to it, but is by no means easy to make perfect yarn. roving, or any fiber drawn out to prepare for spinning, is easy to pull apart, like a cotton ball. amazingly, when you add a little twist to it, it gives it strength. the softer (and usually more expensive) the roving, the shorter the fiber the strands. short fiber strands break easily and are damn hard for a beginner to spin. so no merino, silk, or cashmere for me. boo hoo.


roving from solitude yarns


roving from c.eye.ber.fiber

second, spinning teaches you an awful lot about plants and animals.
where the fibers come from is integral to how it spins. so spinners are usually very knowledgeable about sheep breeds and the origins of fibers. BFL is a favorite. BFL is bluefaced leicester, a sheep breed known for soft but easy to spin fiber.

third, spinning is old.
yarn was first made by rolling fibers between ones fingers and then wrapping it around a stick- that was the first spinning. drop spindles have been around not hundreds, but thousands of years. there are spindle whorls made from wood, bone, clay, glass, and just about anything. there are whorls from Roman ruins that date to circa 200 ad, as well as whorls found in Teotihuacan Valley in Mexico that date to 200-800 ad. all fabric prior to the 1500s was made using some kind of drop spindle.



fourth, you can spin anything.
i mean anything. spinning artists have spun everything and anything you can think of- from recycled newspaper to old cassette tape.


photo from greenupgrader.com

fifth, spinning is green.
it requires very little. you don't even need to go out and buy an expensive artisan spindle (although it's awfully tempting)- you can even make your own spindle out of a dowel and an old CD (see directions here).



you can use any fiber that's available to you. try something local, i bought some roving at the farmers market from my local farm, solitude yarns, or you can use recycled fiber, like newspaper or old cloth torn into strips (see here). i suggest that you start with some local roving and then move onto any fiber that strikes your fancy. it's a great thing to teach kids. it is easy and it teaches them to appreciate the work that goes into the clothes they wear.


yarn from folktale yarns

in a society where clothes are often temporary- purchased when fashionable and discarded shortly after, spinning reminds you of the history, evolution, and value of a single strand of fiber.

felting in a drought

Lately I've been doing rather a lot of felting.

[For the non-knitters out there, felting, or fulling, is the process of beating knitted yarn into submission in the washing machine or using another technique to shrink the knitted item and turn it into a dense, durable mat of fiber].

I love felting, particularly for making toys. But one of the things that always bothers me about felting is using the washing machine. I feel so terrible running two whole wash cycles - all that energy and water! - just to turn a non-essential bit of knitting into a non-essential bit of felted knitting.

If you live in the mid-Atlantic or southeastern U.S., you are well aware that we're in a drought. Most of North Carolina (where I live) is now rated as "extreme" drought conditions. We've got mandatory watering restrictions, and I'm relying mainly on the bucket in my shower to get the flowerbeds through from week to week. So running two whole washing machines full of water (at something like 50 gallons per cycle - oh my god!) just to felt a toy salamander seems kind of... well, insane.


here is my knitted salamander's foot, before felting

So I am on the hunt for low-water felting methods. When I mentioned this at my local yarns store, one of the lovely ladies there suggested this method. While the energy input is still quite high, it definitely saved quite a lot of water.

1. Fill a 5-gallon bucket about halfway with very hot water and a tiny bit of mild soap. Submerge your item to be felted, and a towel, in the bucket, and get them both good and wet. Roll the item up in the towel and tie it shut with a piece of string.

2. Toss the roll-up into the dryer with a shoe or something else for agitation. Set your dryer to the lowest heat setting, and run it for about ten minutes.

3. Check your item to see how well it has felted. Repeat step 2 above until it has felted completely.


post-felting. someday he'll even get eyes and external gills.

I'm still looking for ways to cut the electricity, but this method definitely saved plenty of water, which I hope the real salamanders in my neighborhood creek will be happy about.

Some other things I'm thinking of trying, to eliminate the electricity:
- Needle-felting (done with unspun yarn)
- Sticking the item inside a container and dragging it behind my bike on a short ride
- Using one of those ice-cream makers where you stick the ingredients inside a ball and kick it around the yard.

Any other ideas out there?

Knit* Green

(* = crochet, embroider, etc.)

I was a little girl growing up in Southern California when my mother taught me to knit. Living in Southern California where the temperature rarely dropped below 70 degrees, did not inspire me to become an avid knitter. It was not until I moved to North Carolina, befriended an environmentalist, and started stitch-n-bitch chapel hill that I truly became the knitter I am today. Aside from a knitter, I am an ecologist, and at the time I was doing research on organic farms on cabbageworms. It was a combination of my involvement with the organic farming community and the amazing activist girls of my stitch-n-bitch that lead me to thinking green.

So why knit* green? Well, one of our greatest powers as individuals is our power of purchase. The demand for higher environmental standards have, at least in part, brought about the increase in organic products at your market, and the higher production of fuel-efficient cars. Why not put that same pressure on the textile industry as dutch girl suggested in her earlier sew green post ?

Here are a few facts, guidelines and suggestions on how to knit* greener that I have accumulated through my years as a knitter and ecologist:

Knit* Local.
This is a similar principal to buying your fruits and vegetables from local growers. Although the statistics are not available on the cost of transporting yarn, large amounts of fossil fuels are used to get products to you. It is estimated that food products travel 1,500 miles before being consumed (Heller & Keoleian). How far do you think yarn travels? One would imagine, since a large proportion of yarn comes from countries outside of N. America and Europe, that the mileage might be even higher for yarn. The closer the farm is to you, the less fossil fuel used. Check out your local farmers market or sheep and wool festival (google it for festival near your town) to find out where to get yarn close to home. Not only are you knitting* greener, but you are also supporting small independent farmers and artisans.

Knit* Recycled.
Local yarn can be very expensive. Some of us don’t have that kind of money to spend on being greener, so an alternative is using what has already been produced and transported. This requires a different perspective on knitting* since you can’t necessarily plan on what to knit*, but rather let the yarn inspire you. There is no doubt this could lead to incredibly creative projects! I am always amazed at how much yarn ends up at thrift stores (think about your own stash of yarn). Sometimes you can find very nice yarn and lots of it. Admittedly a huge proportion of the yarn I find is acrylic - but that can be used for a blanket or baby clothes that need to be washable. Another alternative is find and unravel a wool product like a sweater that may be perfectly hideous but is knit out of beautiful yarn. There are some great articles about recycling old sweaters for new projects here, here, and here. You can also use old cotton sheets or t-shirts ripped in strips to knit* a rug, or plastic shopping bags to knit* a sturdy shopping or tote bag. Hell, you can even knit* yourself a 1950s outfit!

Knit* Alternative
More and more yarn companies are offering eco-friendly (and animal-friendly) wool yarns (including my beloved cascade yarns). These are generally yarns that are not dyed, or that are acquired using sustainable and/or humane farming practices. But for those who want to avoid wool altogether, there are now a number of yarn alternatives on the market made from organic or alternative fibers. It is important to be aware that classic alternatives to wool yarn are neither sustainable nor eco-friendly (see below).

What about Acrylic and Cotton?
Acrylic yarn is made from acrylonitrile, which is considered an environmental pollutant and hazardous to human health (more info. here and here). Producing acrylic is a highly chemically-dependent industry and produces pollutants, such as the organic solvents N,N-dimethylmethanamide and sodium thiocyanate, vinyl acetate, and methyl acrylate .

Avoid yarn made from conventionally grown cotton because of the industry’s dependence on pesticides (“…nearly $2.6 billion worth of pesticides -- more than 10% of the world's pesticides and nearly 25% of the world's insecticides,” according to the Pesticide Action Network North America). Seek out organic cotton alternatives, such as Blue Sky Alpacas or Green Mountain Spinnery.

What’s the Alternative?
Its amazing what you can knit* with nowadays. There are numerous alternatives to wool, cotton, and acrylic for eco-friendly and animal-friendly knitters. Including silk (note: silk does kill silkworms/caterpillars), soy, bamboo (but see comments on post), corn, hemp & nettle! Check out more options here and here.



Six years later and 5 hours north in DC, I am still studying bugs and still knitting*. Am I a greener knitter? Well... I do not knit* with hemp yarn or make recycled plastic bag rugs but I do buy most of my yarn from eco-friendly companies. I promote buying local yarn and the DC stitch-n-bitch en mass heads to the sheep and wool festival each May. So yes, I am getting a little greener every year. And every little green step counts.