Tina’s How To Design Natural Fiber Yarn for Knitting, Crochet, and Crafts

Everywhere you go these days, you hear about this or that “going green”. Well, handspun yarn has not “gone green”, it is and has always been as green as it gets. Stop and think on that for a moment.  Every bit helps. Even on a small scale like making hats, scarves or mittens for your friends.  Those are less items mass produced. Less items mass produced mean less energy used in the producing.  As a fiber artist, I have always realized processing fiber myself saves money.  If I wash and card the fiber myself, (or spin in the grease) I haven’t paid for that step in processing the fiber…. however, take that thought one step farther.  I not only saved the cost of paying  a mill to do it for me, the mill did not pay for electricity to run the equipment or water to wash and scour the fiber.  Now think about that in the bigger sense.  When you buy a wool sweater from a commercial store,  the sheep were mass sheared with an electrical shear, the wool was scoured in hot water in large amounts through several cycles using both water and electricity, not to mention the chemical bath to remove the vegetable matter, then dyed in a commercial size tub using heat to activate and set the dye.  The wool was probably air dryed in a heated room to speed up the drying process, then picked to remove any remaining vegetable matter and carded on large equipment. Then the wool was spun by a machine into yarn, and knit by a machine into your sweater.  At this point, I am sure the sweater  was shipped via truck to the location where you purchased it.  Are you getting the picture?  A sweater spun and knit by your own loving hands will have more sentimental value and will probably be kept and worn for much longer than a cheap one you purchased, thus limiting the need for replacement.  This should give you one more reason to feel good about spinning your own yarn and kniting, crocheting, weaving or felting your own clothing.