yarn yoga

I just want to let everyone know that if you try to knit a cabled top on size 6's for a 38" bust woman ~ it's going to take a while. Yes, I stopped and knit an entired nother sweater while I was working on it, but boy is cabling time consuming! Good news, though. I finished the back today! (There will not be pictures, bamboo is a pain to photograph!) I'm not sure how familiar you are with the pattern, but it
calls for this X design on the lower front and back. Well, I'm glad I knit the back first. I'm going to remove it from the front side. It just seems too distracting to me. It's like, "HEY, LOOK AT MY BELLY ~ X MARKS THE SPOT!" I hope it looks ok with an X on the back and not the front, cause I sure as heck ain't reknittin the back!

A while back I posted on the Union Sq KAL that I was going to use the baby Ull. For some reason I had it in my head that it was cotton. I looked it up shortly after and found out how wrong I was.. yup.. still not sure what yarn I'm going to use for that stinkin sweater! I want to use linen, but I really don't feel like messing with gauge too much. I probably will though, I'm just being lazy right now because of all the cables I've been knitting.

Here's a little tibit that I want to share just for the heck of it. This is not the definitive guide to becoming a vegan knitter. I didn't feel like doing a ton of research so this is just from the top of my head.


Vegan yarns.
Well, there are lots of yarns that are vegan, but aren't necessarily environmentally friendly (to my knowledge...) like acrylics and pesticide cotton. I'm really trying to take my knitting a step further and go organic, but that's not working out so well. The selection is just seems limited (especially in colors) and I just don't have the motivation to dye right now (winter is when I start getting in the mood to do more tedious things). I'm really starting to get into linen. I've got some cheap
Senso brand linen that I'm going to use to make some lacy washcloths and soap baggies with. I'd like to make a top with linen as soon as I can. It's really soft and seems like it would have a great drape. The bamboo yarn so far is ok. I hear that it gets softer with washing, so I'm eager to get this top finished and find out if it's
something I want to continue to knit with. I haven't tried the soy silk, yet. I do plan to soon. It feels so much softer than the bamboo that I'm working with from SWTC.

Ok, so let me make a quick list of fibers that I know exist and I could make something with:

Natural fibers would be: Cotton, bamboo, soy silk, linen (flax), hemp,

And the manmade ones would be: viscose, nylon, elastic, acrylic, etc.

If you go to knit pixie, she has a lot of different types of fibers that are really unique and cool!

And for the not so vegan inclined {I love you, anyway!}:

tussah silk (if you must use silk, use tussah)

Homespun wool from sheep that you KNOW, with notarized documentation that the sheep will not get sunburn, will not freeze in the winter, and will never, ever, ever get sent to the slaughter house ~ or murdered for any reason what so ever. (The exception to the rule would be euthanasia because of a very painful disease or something.)

Compassionate living is fun and easy!!