Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Worldwide Wednesday - Nepal


This week’s Worldwide Wednesday is a bit different. Since buying “The Knitters Book of Yarn” I’ve been a bit obsessed with odd fibers.
I found a website from Nepal that has fascinated me. It’s a manufacturer so we normal folk can’t buy from this site but it has great information. So this week we visit Nepal and the Asian Trading Centre.
Some of the yarns they have are: Recycled silk made from saris, Banana fiber, Cotton (well they all can’t be unique yarns), Hemp, Nettle, and more. There’s a photo gallery of people creating the yarns and garments made from the yarn. Each yarn type has several pictures including “raw” banana fiber.

Recycled Silk Yarns is another site from Nepal. This site tells about the women for work for them. Some from home and some in “a safe working environment that offers child care and meals”. There are many pictures of how the recycled silk fiber is made. These ladies are using drop spindles! It really makes me appreciate the yarn. This site is actually from Sacramento, CA. I can’t find where on the site you can actually buy yarn and the only dates I can find are 2006 but – the pictures are great and you get a chance to see how the yarn is made. The yarn is made from the factory "leftover" from the making of saris. These ends are sent to women around the country where they are processed to a fiber base and then sent off to other women to spin into yarn. From what I understand the colorways vary depending on what part of the country as colors for saris vary in the different areas. More greens in one area - more blues in another area.

The last site this week is Himalaya yarns. Not too many pictures, but this will give you a place to buy some recycled silk yarn if you’re interested after checking out the other sites.
After reading these sites and some other bits of info I've picked up I decided I need to hunt up some recycled silk to try. If somebody sees some recycled silk yarn in the Minneapolis-St Paul area, let me know.
Christmas Preparation
It's less than a week till Christmas. I got a phone call today from one of the Aunts asking what she could bring for dinner. I had to admit, I haven't even thought about the meal yet. Shoot - I've got the weekend to think about that! I gave her the generic - a salad would be nice - line. Guess I'm going to have to think about the rest of the food one of these days.

2 comments:

Guinifer said...

I knit a bag out of recycled silk over a year ago - the stuff is brutally tough on the fingers. Very twisty.

Anonymous said...

On the MN Knitters forum on Ravelry, there's a thread called, "I'm looking for..." Maybe you could pose your question there and get a tip on where to buy some recycled silk.