Photo by Steve Taylor/Getty Images

(Read Part 1 here.)

So the universal odometer rolled toward the 20th century, where all of hemp’s trouble began. Despite the lack of mechanized harvesting and processing, hemp’s versatility as the source of paper, textiles, and cordage enabled it to become America’s No. 2 cash crop, surpassed only by cotton.

In the 1920s, industry movers and shakers such as Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, and Henry Ford began developing synthetic products derived from from renewable biomass resources, including hemp. In fact, Ford used the resin of stiffened hemp fibers to construct an automobile that also ran on renewable biofuels, stressing that he planned to use only resources from the “annual growth of the fields.”

“The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust—almost anything,” Ford said in 1925. “There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.”

Photo by Institut für Landtechnik

Around the same time, however, another octane-boosting fuel called tetra-ethyl lead, marketed by a little company known as DuPont, was also on the ascent. But the invention of an efficient and cost-effective method of processing hemp threatened to throw DuPont’s new technologies—which included nylon (billed as “synthetic hemp”), processing chemicals for wood-pulp paper, and pesticides and fertilizers for the cotton industry—for a loop.

George Schlichten’s hemp decorticator promised to revolutionize the hemp industry much like the cotton gin did with cotton. In February 1938, Popular Mechanics hailed hemp as the world’s first “billion-dollar crop”, providing “thousands of jobs for American workers throughout the land.”

That allegedly didn’t sit well the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury at the time, Andrew Mellon, president of Mellon Bank and, when he was appointed, the wealthiest man in America, according to Vote Hemp. Mellon Bank was also one of DuPont’s biggest financiers and loaned huge sums of cash to fund the company’s growing petrochemical business, one that had the potential to bring home 80 percent of the bacon.

Mellon appointed Harry Anslinger, an associate who would later marry Mellon’s niece, to head the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a body that later evolved into the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) we know and love.

Conspiracy? What conspiracy?

Photo by Amy R. Singer

One of the surprises from Knitty.com’s Spring 2007 issue: The Everlasting Bagstopper, designed by the chief knitwit herself, Amy Singer. Using only two skeins of Hemp for Knitting’s allhemp6, the bag includes a drawstring closure for extra security, which is a nifty touch.

Related article:
1. Yarn Review: Hemp for Knitting allhemp3

Photo by Edward the Bonobo, under a Creative Commons license

How did hemp, a highly valued fiber grown by America’s founding fathers and employed for centuries in the production of textiles, paper, energy, and food become synonymous with potheads and hippies? After all, the first paper in China was pulped from hemp, the oldest known plant to be domestically cultivated. The Magna Carta and the Gutenberg Bible were both printed on paper made with hemp rags—even Rembrandt and Van Gogh slathered hemp-oil-based paints on hemp canvas, with the word “canvas” itself derived from “cannabis.”

“Hemp fiber was found to be a reinforcement agent in a 6th Century bridge in France. Hemp seed was considered a key nutritional element in Chinese medicine for everything from digestive disorders to pain, fever, ulcers and many other ills and was consumed as a primary foodstuff by peasants throughout Europe and Asia for centuries,” according to Erik Rothenberg, the author of “A Renewal of Common Sense: The Case for Hemp in 21st Century America” and the director of the non-profit Vote Hemp.

In fact, hemp was so important to the nascent colony of Jamestown that it passed America’s first hemp law in 1619, making it illegal not to grow hemp; Massachusetts and Connecticut did the same in 1631 and 1632, respectively. The original drafts of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were drawn up on hemp paper. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, hemp farmers both, were advocates of growing hemp “for the economic necessity of the state.”

Photo by Zen Sutherland, under a Creative Commons license

Let’s back up from the history lesson for a moment. The substance that has anti-marijuana crusaders’ panties in a bunch is a cannabinoid known as delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient found in all members of the Cannabis genus of flowering plants.

Hemp and marijuana refer to two entirely different varieties of Cannabis sativa—just like chihuahua and Doberman refer to two different breeds of Canis lupus familiaris. Industrial hemp (subspecies sativa, variety sativa), which is cultivated for its fiber and is characterized by long stems and little branching, contains no greater than 0.3 percent THC, a concentration that is so infinitesimal that no one could get high from smoking or ingesting it. (Hemp also contains a relatively high percentage of another cannabinoid known as cannabidiol, or CBD, which besides having intrinsic value as a sedative and an anticonvulsant, also acts as an anti-psychoactive agent, blocking the effects of the THC high you get from smoking marijuana.)

Marijuana (subspecies indica, variety indica), which is cultivated for recreational and medicinal drug use, is low in CBD and has an average potency of 5 to 15 percent THC, concentrated primarily in the flowering tops and to a lesser extent in the leaves. The stockier-looking plants are spaced widely to encourage branching and flowering.

Hemp, in other words, does not equal marijuana, a distinction that the history of federal drugs laws show that the U.S. government apparently once knew. So how did one get confused with the other? Two words: personal profit.

A generous 165 yards per skein, Hemp for Knitting’s fingering to sportweight allhemp3, in the pumpkin (022) colorway pictured above, knits up very similarly to 100 percent tightly plied cotton—they’re both plant-based fibers, after all. Because, like 4-ply cotton, the fibers have little give, your hands may start to cramp if you barrel through extended sessions of knitting. (So if you don’t like knitting with most cottons, which I personally don’t, you’re not going to like working with hemp, either, which the joints of my fingers didn’t.)

allhemp3 is a sturdy yarn that can take a fair amount of abuse—unsurprising because of hemp’s reputation for tensile strength—but it isn’t very forgiving of repeated frogging; tufts of fiber will whip about and latch onto your clothing. Strands aren’t perfectly smooth, either, so you’ll get the rare bump in your knitting, though probably not enough to be noticeable.

Blocking made the swatch softer, and the stitches evened out more, though not dramatically. Rated gauge is 7st per inch on size 2 needles.

This review refers to yarn purchased online at Kpixie.com

Photo by Old Navy

Wendy Richardson needs to blog more often. How else would I have found the U.K.-based Environmental Justice Foundation’s 2007 report, The Deadly Chemicals in Cotton? It’s a 40-pager, which may require more dedication than you currently have, but here is a sampling of the salient points, as outlined in the report’s Executive Summary. (Those two pages very worth a read-through in their entirety.) Global consumption of cotton, by the by, has doubled in the past 30 years.

• Cotton is the world’s most important non-food agricultural commodity, yet it is responsible for the release of US$2 billion of chemical pesticides each year, within which at least US$819 million are considered toxic enough to be classified as hazardous by the World Health Organisation. Cotton accounts for 16% of global insecticide releases—more than any other single crop. Almost 1.0 kilogram of hazardous pesticides is applied for every hectare under cotton.

• Between 1 and 3% of agricultural workers worldwide suffer from acute pesticide poisoning with at least 1 million requiring hospitalization each year, according to a report prepared jointly for the FAO, UNEP, and WHO. These figures equate to between 25 million and 77 million agricultural workers worldwide.

• A single drop of the pesticide aldicarb, absorbed through the skin can kill an adult. Aldicarb is commonly used in cotton production and in 2003 almost 1 million kilos was applied to cotton grown in the USA. Aldicarb is also applied to cotton in 25 other countries worldwide.

• Despite being particularly vulnerable to poisoning, child labourers throughout the world risk exposure to hazardous pesticides through participation in cotton production. In India and Uzbekistan children are directly involved in cotton pesticide application. While in Pakistan, Egypt, and Central Asia child labourers work in cotton fields either during or following the spraying season. Children are also often the first victims of pesticide poisonings, even if they do not participate to spraying, due to the proximity of their homes to cotton fields, or because of the re-use of empty pesticide containers.

• Hazardous pesticides associated with global cotton production represent a substantial threat to global freshwater resources. Hazardous cotton pesticides are now known to contaminate rivers in USA, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Australia, Greece and West Africa. In Brazil, the world’s 4th largest consumer of agrochemicals, researchers tested rainwater for the presence of pesticides. 19 different chemicals were identified of which 12 were applied to cotton within the study area.

(Emphasis is mine.)

Click here for more »

Photo by Llamajamas

You guys are going to love this one. Llamajamas is a family-owned purveyor of “pure, natural” wool that includes alpaca and merino. I’m particularly drawn to its line of organically dyed merino and their vibrant, earthy hues.

According to Llamajamas:

These yarns have been naturally dyed using time honored recipes and locally available materials. We roast plants, bark, nuts, and other natural materials over open fires for many hours to create the rich, natural dyes.

Spun by artisan women in Ecuador, Llamajama’s yarns are fairly traded. The company pledges to “pay a fair wage, engage in environmentally sustainable practices, build long-term relationships, and insist on healthy and safe working conditions.”

Also available—though it’s currently listed as out of stock—is a wool wash made with organic coconut, olive, and jojoba oils, and imbued with the natural antibacterial and antifungal properties of tea-tree oil.

There are some really darling knitting patterns for sale, as well, but if you’re not of the knitting temperament, Llamajamas also sells ready-to-wear slippers, soakers, pants, and blankets.

Patterns, yarns, and a small cache of that wool wash can also be found at Kpixie.

Photo by Mountain Mist

Mountain Mist, in collaboration with NatureWorks—the gurus behind corn-based plastic—has just released a new range of eco-friendly fiber products. Derived from U.S.-grown corn (or, less romantically, fermented corn sugars), the patented Ingeo fibers are made from an annually renewable resource—far more sustainable than petroleum-based synthetics.

Mountain Mist’s EcoCraft line includes fiberfill, batting, and pillowforms in a variety of sizes. Hypoallergenic and washable, the products are also industrially compostable at the end of their lives, according to the company. Just one slight ethical caveat: Ingeo isn’t unblemished by controversy, as its source crop is largely genetically engineered corn—itself a hot-button issue. (An estimated 30 percent of all domestic corn is genetically modified.) NatureWorks, which is a subsidiary of Cargill, takes pains to explain that any GE organisms are removed during production; this still provides an avenue for GE technology, however.

Still, in an area with limited sustainable options (organic cotton and wool batting and pillowforms can get pricey), you have to concede that it’s at least a step forward. Admittedly, it’s not unlike moving from Pennywise the demonic, homocidal clown from Stephen King’s It to Mr. Bill O’Reilly, but you get some modicum of progress nevertheless.

Online and mail-order requests should be directed to Fabric Shack. Pricing was not available at press time, but is expected to be comparable with that of premium cotton batting.

Photo by Jonathan Player/International Herald Tribune

We’ve heard of “slow food”—now prep your noggin for the concept of “slow clothes.” Fast clothes, as defined by the International Herald Tribune, are “low-cost garments that can be used and discarded without a second thought.” Think cheap, readily disposable clothing from your usual suspects—such as Old Navy, Target, and Kmart—which are replacing more-durable hand-me-downs that last one or two generations.

Consumers spend more than $1 trillion a year on clothing and textiles, an estimated one-third of that in Western Europe, another third in North America, and about a quarter in Asia. …

Britons on average discard about 65 pounds, or 30 kilograms, of clothing and textiles a year. Only an eighth of that goes to charities for reuse.

“In a wealthy society, clothing and textiles are bought as much for fashion as for function,” [a Cambridge University report, entitled, “Well Dressed?”] says, and that means that clothes are replaced “before the end of their natural life.”

To cut back on carbon use and make fashion truly sustainable, shoppers will have “to own less, to have less stuff,” says Julian Allwood, one of the researchers who worked on the report. “And that is a very hard sell.”

Find out more about the slow-clothes movement here. Anyone up for a 100-mile-closet challenge?

Related articles:
1. I Shop Therefore I Am: Consumerism and Fashion
2. Clothes Call

Photo by Lion Brand Yarn

I nearly sprayed my morning tea on my computer screen when I got Lion Brand’s e-mail announcing their foray into the realm of color-grown organic cotton. From the company:

Many of us choose organic foods at the grocery store or farmer’s market, especially when it comes to feeding babies and children. Why? Organic methods are great for both people and the environment—improving the soil’s health, the water’s purity and the health of wild animals like birds, bugs, and bunnies, too.

Lion Brand’s new yarn, Organic Cotton, comes from that same soil. Harvested and sorted by hand, the cotton is free of pesticides and herbicides. This cotton grows in 4 natural colors, right on the plant, so dying is not necessary. Now these subtle earth tones are available to you. This all-natural, soft and versatile new yarn is ideal for all sorts of projects, from baby clothing to luxurious clothing and items for your home.

Start a new baby out right. Craft with Lion Brand Organic Cotton with a clear conscience. It’ll do our environment, and the new baby, a whole lot of good.

Bunnies, people. WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE BUNNIES?

You even get three free patterns to go with your new organic loot. Don’t be fooled by the company’s cheapie rep, though—at $6.99 for 82 yards, you’re better off buying Blue Sky Alpaca’s line, which costs less per yard at $8.50 for 150 yards.

Still, as the Wal-Mart of yarns, Lion is providing increased sustainable-fiber access and face time to a wider clientele, which isn’t a bad thing, but don’t ask me to stretch the Wal-Mart metaphor further by going into organic-fiber standards, because it’s way too early in the a.m. to do anything more complicated than poke the metaphor. And maybe name it Squishy. But THAT’S WHERE I DRAW THE LINE.

Also, if this turns out to be one elaborate punk’ing, I will hunt you down and cut you.

Also, also, it snowed a bit this morning, but admittedly that’s neither here nor there.

Alphabet Soup by Harmony Art

Harmony Art has some awesome new made-in-the-U.S., organic-cotton prints, including my favorite of the lot, Alphabet Soup. I just bought a yard of Harmony’s Let It Grow from Organic Cotton Plus and it is just as scrumptious up close.
(Tip: Organic-cotton fabric can be pricey, but buying slightly misprinted or somehow imperfect “seconds” or “thirds” can save you money.)

Related articles:
1. Organic Cotton Textile Spotlight
2. What’s the Cotton Pickin’ Idea?

Reconstructed tops by Snowflake 66, available at Cut + Paste

Shopping as therapy is so ingrained in our cultural identity that despite my best efforts, when under duress, I still double over, sink my head into open palms, and use the Lord’s name in vain because GOD ALMIGHTY I need to shop NOW. It’s a genetic sickness, kind of like Bruce Banner’s, if the Hulk had a thing for pointelle lace and cap sleeves. Most of the time, Chekhov leaps onto my lap and jabs me in the eye so I have trouble making out where to key in my credit-card number. When his mind is honed in like a particle-beam satellite on the cleanliness of his furry tuckus, however, the following cheat sheet comes in handy.

GOOD: Buy organic clothing, i.e, no pesticides or chemicals were used in the making of this T-shirt, which is good for you and good for the environment. (See “What’s the Cotton Pickin’ Idea” for problems with conventionally grown cotton.) Other tree-hugging materials: hemp, bamboo, and soysilk.

BETTER: Buy vintage or repurposed/reconstructed clothing. Their polluting impact has come and gone, no new resources have been expended, and you’re not contributing anything new to the waste stream. Plus, you’re keeping perfectly good clothes out of the landfill. Even Umbra of Grist says, “New organic clothing is not better than already-purchased synthetic clothing.”

BEST: Don’t buy anything. (No foolin’!) Refuse to wrap your identity within the temporarily gratifying bounds of material consumption and be “possessed by your possessions.” Like Juliet B. Schor, author of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need and Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture says, choose quality over quantity, longevity over novelty, and versatility over specialty. If we’re satisfied with a much smaller closet, we can spend more per garment so our clothes are better constructed. “Workers would work less, produce fewer but higher-quality items, and be paid more per hour. Such a change would help make ecologically clean technologies economically feasible,” she says.

Gaiam introduces its line of activewear made from pesticide-free soysilk. ($30-$55, Gaiam)

Photo by the USDA Agricultural Research Service

It may not be long before you can shake your tail-feathers. Literally. Scientists at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln plan to transform agricultural waste, such as chicken feathers and rice straw, into viable textiles that could oust petroleum-based synthetic fabrics from the market. You won’t be strutting around in some flightless fowl’s fancy plumage, however, as researchers say the feather-based fabric will simulate wool, while the rice-straw fabric will approximate linen or cotton, offering potential eco-friendly options for carpets, automobiles, buildings, and more. (The study describing rice straw fabric was presented Sept. 11 at the 232nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society; the study about chicken feather fabric was presented today.) I bet they’ve been fielding calls from Björk ALL DAY, except she keeps asking for Michael Bolton, bursting into giggles, and then hanging up after screaming about the clowns in her garbage disposal.

From the American Chemical Society: “In the future, it might be perfectly normal to wear suits and dresses made of chicken feathers or rice straw.”

“We hope that the research reported here will stimulate interest in using agricultural byproducts as textile fibers, which would add value to agricultural crops and also make the fiber industry more sustainable,” says Yiqi Yang, Ph.D., a professor of textile science at the university. His collaborator for both studies is research scientist Narendra Reddy, a doctoral candidate at the school.

With millions of tons of chicken feathers and rice straw available worldwide each year, these agricultural wastes represent an abundant, cheap and renewable alternative to petroleum-based synthetic fibers, Yang says. And unlike petroleum-based fibers, these agro-fibers are biodegradable. The development could be a boon to the nation’s rice and chicken farmers, Yang says.

Rice fabrics are the most developed of the two fabric concepts to date. Rice straw consists of the stems of the rice plant that are left over after rice grains are harvested. Like cotton and linen, rice straw is composed mostly of cellulose.

Using a special combination of chemicals and enzymes, a process that is now under patent review, Yang and Reddy developed fibers from the straw. The properties of the fibers indicate that the fibers are capable of being spun into fabrics using common textile machinery. The resulting fabric will have an appearance similar to cotton or linen, Yang says.

Chicken feathers are composed mostly of keratin, the same type of protein that is found in wool. The researchers are particularly interested in the barbs and barbules, the thin, filamentous network that forms the fluffy parts of the feather. These structures have a sturdy honeycomb architecture containing tiny air pockets that make the filaments extremely lightweight and resilient. Those properties offer the potential for developing fabrics that have lighter weight, better shock absorption and superior insulation—properties that may represent an improvement over wool, Yang says.

(Emphasis is mine.)

In 2001, Americans discarded around 9.8 million tons of textiles into the waste stream—up from 1 million tons in 1960—accouting for 4 percent of landfill waste, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Clothing and footwear alone tallied up to 6.7 million tons. Of these, only 930,000 tons were recovered for export or recycling.

Like it or not, every time we buy something new, we’re contributing to the waste stream, simply because everything, unless it’s completely biodegradable, has to end up somewhere eventually. More often than not, that “somewhere” is a greenhouse-gas-spewing, space-hogging landfill. Couple this fact with the surging popularity of styles from bygone eras in our history, and you have a corresponding revival in the use of vintage fabrics, which should not be confused with vintage-inspired textiles or vintage reproductions. Vintage and repurposed fabrics have little or no environmental footprint—their time (and ecological impact) has already come and gone—which is why green-minded companies such as aGaIN NYC (my personal favorite) are redefining what it means to have sustainable style. Here is just a selection of what some others are doing:

I love Poppy Cotton’s limited-edition pillows, wall hangings, and lampshades crafted from vintage home linens and scarves, but they’re not for the weak of constitution—or wallet. Still, you gotta love a designer who was inspired by both The Stepford Wives (the 1975 original, I hope) and Rosemary’s Baby, resulting in a sublime collection of retro suburban gothic chic, quietly seething beneath a veneer of propriety and normalcy. ($45-$115, Poppy Cotton)

The New York-based BIBette’s Feast tailors vintage-fabric baby bibs “for modern kids” from a selection of vintage and reproduction fabrics. The bibs are backed with cotton terrycloth and are finished off with a vintage button, snap, or tie closure. ($16, BIBette’s Feast)

I usually prefer to limit my scope to North America for practical reasons, but this Australian company was too delicious to pass up. Dedicated to low-impact, environmentally friendly, and local production, Slingfings features a line of clothing and bags handmade in New South Wales off-the-grid using solar power. Its Retro Fabric Baby Carrier comes in a dizzying selection of attractive recycled or reclaimed vintage fabrics from the ’50s to the ’90s. Any other production materials, the company says, are 100 percent natural and sourced from local small businesses. (AUD$180, Slingfings)

Stitched together from funky double-knit fabric from the ’70s , this maisy daisy of a wallet from Two Busy Bees contains two credit-card-size compartments. The company also offers bags, pouches, and hairclips from a range of vintage fabrics. ($15, Two Busy Bees)

Better Homes and Gardens has instructions on how to sew your own lined carryall from vintage fabric. To locate genuine vintage fabric outside of thrift stores, estate sales, and your grandmother’s closet, eBay is the obvious choice. Some of my other favorite online sources include AntiqueFabric.com, eBay’s hipper kid sister Etsy, RustyZipper.com, Katie’s Vintage Kimono, Sharon’s Antiques, and Warm Biscuit. (If you’re ever in NYC, check out Brooklyn General for vintage cottons, plastics, and barkcloth.) For vintage trim, ribbons, and buttons, hit up Accessories of Old, Oh Bara, or Vintage Trims.

Related article:
1. Everything Old is New Again

From the Billings Gazette: “Pink and blue are passé. The hot thing in the children’s market these days is green.”

Parents are increasingly turned on by the idea of organic products—clothing, creams and food made without chemicals that they think are too harsh to be used on their pristine and delicate children.

While organic baby food has developed a strong following over past years—a $206 million industry last year, according to the most recent figures available from the Organic Trade Association—interest in organic clothes and cleansers is growing as quickly as the kids they target.

Sales of organic fibers for infant clothes and cloth diapers rose 40 percent between 2004 and 2005 to $40 million, and fiber for the child-teen market grew 52 percent to $3 million. Meanwhile, organic personal-care products, including baby care, rose 34 percent to $26 million.

Whether organic products offer any sort of health benefits is unclear; most experts say only the most sensitive children could have a problem with conventional clothing or personal-care products. But parents seem more motivated by a desire to keep their kids untainted from some of the harshness and artificiality of the world for as long as they can.

“This is the first time—and I’ve been in business 10 years—that we’re catching up to organic food,” says Janice Masoud, founder of Under the Nile, an organic clothing company based in Milpitas, Calif., that specializes in children’s items.

Under the Nile will launch a test program in 150 Target stores this coming holiday season with towel sets, swaddle blanket sets, a sherpa two-piece cardigan set and flannel footies.

From her regular collection, the most popular items are bodysuits, buntings and baby gowns that can be worn home from the hospital. Masoud thinks that’s because they’re all pieces that are right next to a baby’s skin for long periods of time.

She says she cringes at the thought of the pesticides and insecticides used to grow some cotton rubbing against a newborn’s skin. She also notes that formaldehyde is sometimes used in fabric’s finishing process, as is polyvinyl chloride, known as PVC.

“Cotton is supposed to be a ‘natural fiber,’ ” says Masoud, who obtained fair-trade certification for her brand, meaning that the co-op of Egyptian farmers that grows her cotton she buys her cotton from are paid more—and they, in turn, put the investment into their land.

“A mother would rather spend some dollars on her baby than herself,” Masoud says. “There are so many pollutants in the society today that moms are worried about for the kids. Moms are trying not to add extra chemicals to their babies.”

(Emphases are mine.)

Interweave Press has served up a light sprinkling of preview pages for Natural Knits for Babies and Moms: Beautiful Designs Using Organic Yarns, by yarn doyenne Louisa Harding, to whet our appetites. I love the simple yet classic lines, and that cleverly adjustable Bump Sweater is the perfect blank canvas for some embroidered adornment along its edges. What do you think?

(Click to enlarge.)

Photo by Southern Exposure

Hey spinners, want to reduce your spindle’s environmental footprint further? You can cultivate your own color-grown cotton (in natural brown or olive green) by sowing seeds from Southern Exposure. Sheep, angora rabbits, and even pet alpacas are so 2005! Transform yourself into a plantation princess, throw “Fiddle-dee-dee” around like a punctuation mark, drape yourselve in luxurious curtains, and finally have a reason to learn the lyrics of “Summertime” by heart! With God as your witness, YOU’LL NEVER BE WITHOUT FIBER AGAIN!

You can also get your seeds via Local Harvest. The coolness factor is making me dizzier than a disco-loving jackrabbit on roller skates.

I ordered 2 pounds of organic cotton scraps from Natural America ($4 per pound; shipping and handling cost $9¹), just to see what I would get—you may marvel at my journalistic dedication—and also to try my hand at making some of these lovely Japanese patchwork bags. And if your spouse or partner protests at the deluge that has overtaken the living room, you can grit your teeth in self-righteous indignation and inform said person that you’re saving fabric waste from the landfill, and bark “DON’T YOU CARE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING?!”

I recommend whipping out a picture of a drowning baby walrus for extra validity.

¹I’m hoping that the transportation/fuel cost to climate change is mitigated by the waste reduction and using “used” instead of buying new, which would have a much larger environmental footprint.

Photo by Pluckypluff

Talk about a sustainable fiber! This amazing yarn was spun by that genius Pluckyfluff into a batt using shredded office documents, newspapers, lunch bags, and hemp, as well as some shiny sparklies of unknown origin.

You can chart the entire creation process pictorially here.

And while you’re there, take a gander at this jaw-dropping yarn spun out of a vintage muumuu.

I’ve just added a directory of sustainable fabric retail stores to the Greensleeves index for all your organic cotton, hemp, tencel, and soy fabric needs. Because you’re my unique and special snowflake, and no unique and special snowflake of mine should wade through pages of search-engine results. (Check the individual fiber’s resource page for wholesaler/manufacturer information.)

Photo by Blonde Chicken Boutique

A very welcome addition to the sphere of sustainable fibers, Blonde Chicken Boutique launched this year with the purpose of supplying ethically sourced, made-to-order handpainted yarns to fiber buffs. The Dayton, OH-based “handpainted, organic, luxury” store is “committed to seeking out fair trade, organic and sustainable [yarns] and fibers to share with our customers.” Better yet is its desire to “offer not only yarns and fibers, but also education about making eco-friendly decisions in your fiber arts.”

Currently, Blonde Chicken has a soysilk yarn in three handpainted colorways for online gawking: Lilac, Verdant, and Hydrangea. Piqued your interest? Sign up for the mailing list to receive updates on new products.

(I’ve added a list of specialty sustainable yarn stores to the Greensleeves index, as well. Give me a holler if I’ve left out your favorite store.)

Want to stuff your plushies with some organic cotton/wool batting for cheap? Natural America sells organic cotton/wool batting left over from its mattresses and pillows for $5 per pound.

The company also sells fabric scraps—you have a choice between organic cotton and hemp—for $4 per pound. Perfect for quilters or the buy-curious. (For the fabric scraps, call 877-867-5890 for availability and descriptions as the inventory varies.)

Call it stash enhancement or waste reduction—it’s all copacetic.

Natural Knits for Babies and Moms: Beautiful Designs Using Organic Yarns by Louisa Harding

Nature Babies: Natural Knits and Organic Crafts for Moms, Babies, and a Better World by Tara Jon Manning

Mollie from One/Change ambushed Denyse Schmidt via e-mail to find out if the designer intends to shift towards sustainable fabrics.

Right now the supplies for their quilts are manufactured commercially and sadly, the textile industry is not without its environmental issues. Denyse wishes there were more options for sustainably produced raw goods, but what is out there now is much more expensive than what DSQ currently uses and unfortunately, because their prices are already difficult for some folks, it is not financially possible to make the switch.

The good news, from what Denyse says, is that the industry is definitely moving in the direction of sustainability. The even better news is that Denyse is looking into producing a line of organic solids with her fabric manufacturer and Sarita Handa Exports (SHE Home), the company in India that DSQ works with, is also researching organic materials. Denyse realizes that it is a slow process, but the important thing is that they are trying to move closer to better practices and as they do it is up to the market to financially support their positive changes.

I encourage Greensleevers to write to Denyse to applaud her long-term goal and to spur her on to hasten that transition. All the facts and figures you need to support your case for sustainability can be found in the archives.

(If you BCC me on the e-mail or send me a scan or photo of your letter, I’ll make a $4 donation to Heifer International for you. No foolin’!)

Thanks, Mollie!

Before we formally kick off our chapter on the sustainability of organic wool, here’s some rather foul cud to chew on, so to speak. Ever wonder why the paper sleeves of some yarns proclaim their charges to be “permanently mothproof”? One curious customer e-mailed Brown Sheep, just one of the yarn manufacturers making the claim, to ask what it meant. “They replied that a small amount of a pesticide (Mitin FF) is actually boiled into the yarn during the dyeing process,” she said, horrified.

Why you should care:
Even if we subtract the environmental damage caused by these toxins, pesticides are still poisonous, horribly persistent¹ synthetic chemicals that can build up in your fatty tissue over time, increasing your risk of cancer and reproductive problems, while impairing brain development in children². (Their effect is more insidious because it is slow-acting and long term.) In fact, the National Academy of Sciences classifies more than 80 percent of today’s most commonly used pesticides—routinely found in breast milk—as carcinogenic. Even low-level exposure to pesticides can precipitate headaches, nausea, dizziness, and mental confusion.

(To prevent egg-laying moths from satisfying their babies’ case of the munchies on your natural fibers, toss a sachet of sweet-smelling lavender buds or dried lemon peel in with your yarn.)

¹They are so pertinacious that pesticides banned more than 30 years ago are still found in the umbilical cord blood of newborns today.

²Also, a National Cancer Institute study discovered that children are as much as six times more likely to get childhood leukemia when pesticides are used in the home and garden.

Photo by Charles Mason/Getty Images

Bt cotton is cotton that has has been genetically modified by the insertion of one or more genes from a common soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis. According to the University of Tennessee, these genes “encode for the production of insecticidal proteins, and thus, genetically transformed plants produce one or more toxins as they grow.” (Read more about conventionally grown and genetically modified cotton in this previous post and about our pal and leading purveyor of Bt cotton, Monsanto, here.)

From NDTV.com: “Unusual livestock deaths blamed on Bt Cotton.”

There is yet another controversy linked to the genetically modified Bt cotton plant and this time it is the alarming reports of sheep and goats taking ill, even dying after grazing on leftover Bt cotton fields.

This is what farmers and shepherds in Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh are saying.

The central government has reportedly ordered independent toxicology tests on Bt cotton leaves to ascertain the facts.

“They just became very dull and lifeless and died,” said Pendala Venkatamma, describing what happened to her sheep.

Earlier this year in February-March several villages in Warangal reported that sheep and goats were dying in unusually high numbers from a disease they did not recognise.

The only clue they had was that the animals grazed continuously on fields where Bt cotton had been grown.

“They were grazing on Bollguard cotton. In four-five days, they became dull, their stomachs swelled up and they died,” said Gantaiah, a shepherd.

Learn more about “India’s Bt Cotton Fraud” and Monsanto’s charges of bribery and data falsification here and here.