Climate Beneficial

I was thinking through the idea of "sustainability" in fibers and what exactly it means to use materials that can be produced in a way that doesn't inevitably end in complete depletion of a resource. So think sheep's wool... or cotton... or flax.... all items that can reasonably be harvested or produced forever, assuming a healthy ecosystem surrounding the sheep, the farm, etc.

But we run into trouble when we focus on a narrow range of items. Monoculture may not be as immediately destructive non-renewable resource extraction but it still doesn't fulfill the promise of "sustainable."

So that brings me to this sweater I'm knitting. Usually I'd reach for locally produced, milled, and dyed wool. Because that's wheat we have here and I know the finished product will reflect the terroir of our fibershed.

This time, I'm using wool and other fibers to "spread the load" across different harvests and ecostsyems, though still staying with items that grow here. So, I'm using my favorite Shetland wool (the skein on the the right) as well as seaweed yarn (already knitted into the base), flax (the mustard yellow in the cake), and banana fibers (the brighter yellow). Stay tuned for photos of the finished product.

Fibershed.org's definition of Climate Beneficial fibers: Natural fibers like wool, cotton, alpaca, and flax linen can be grown and raised in ways that maximize the drawdown of carbon from the atmosphere to help restore ecosystem health and stabilize our climate.

Sustainable fibers