sweetgeorgia

Supernatural SweetGeorgia

There’s more than one way to get colour on yarn.

Tomorrow when we re-open the shop, we’ll be offering a collection of yarns and fibres under the name “Supernatural SweetGeorgia”. Natural and plant dyes create some of the most beautifully nuanced and luscious colours in our history. These colours are full of life and energy. Supernatural SweetGeorgia is our collection of yarns and fibres from organic, sustainable and renewable sources that are hand-dyed with natural and plant dyes. Multiple overdyes and multi-step processes… there’s a whole lot of love in these yarns.

As a knitter, spinner and weaver, I am well aware of the beauty and benefits of using natural fibres like silk, wool, or linen. But then things became more a little complicated with the release of products like soy silk, bamboo, ingeo, organic wool, and organic cotton. What’s good to use? What’s responsible to use? How do I sort out the options? I am, more than ever, conflicted about the choices.

We are inundated with publicity about “green” products and “sustainability”… just this month’s Knit.1 mag is entitled “The Green Issue” in which they discuss knitting, eco-activism, and organic yarns. Vogue Patterns’ April/May 2008 issue has an article called “Sewing Green” which describes all eco-friendly fabrics. Rowan’s latest magazine features their new “green” line called PureLife. There is Amy Singer’s book “No Sheep For You” which details all sorts of alternative natural fibres… and also Shannon Okey’s new book “Alt Fiber” which delves into even more obscure alternative fibres like pineapple ramie and kenaf. You can’t escape what seems like the immense pressure to make the right and responsible choice.

Treehugger simultaneously evangelizes about the benefits of bamboo textiles while also considering that maybe bamboo textiles aren’t really sustainable or organic. Confused? Yeah, me too. I think it’s all too easy to idealize any one particular “new” fibre or textile and to put something on a pedestal without investigation or scrutiny. In no way do I believe that I have the answers… but I am committed to looking at and studying different options while also encouraging everyone to do the same. Be open and vigilant. Here are some places to start:

• Sustainability in Textiles: An Overview (Worsted Witch)
• Greensleeves: Sustainability in the Fiber & Textile Arts (Worsted Witch)
• Eco-Tip: Mini Directory of Green Fabrics (TreeHugger)
• Sustainable Clothing: Emerging Standards (OrganicClothing)
• Tencel: Sustainable but not necessarily healthy (OrganicClothing)
• Bamboo: Facts behind the Fiber (OrganicClothing)
• Green Knitter: Natural, Organic and Eco-friendly Yarn Chart

In tomorrow’s update, we’ll have some naturally dyed bamboo and silk yarns. And in future updates, we’ll also have organic wools in worsted weight. I’ve just dyed some in pomegranate and it’s lovely, squishy stuff. Pomegranate-dyed organic merino yarn might not entirely save the world, but hey, I’m trying.

1% of the proceeds from the Supernatural SweetGeorgia collection will be directed to OnePercentForThePlanet, an alliance of businesses committed to leveraging their resources to create a healthier planet. Members donate at least 1% of their annual net revenues to environmental organizations worldwide.

It’s what’s for dinner.

On the menu today, iron overdyed hemp yarns. Tasty.

For dessert, I think we’ve got some indigo overdyes too. Mmm.

Some days I want to gough my eyes out.

And other days, I am saved by the beauty in things like this:

It’s 100g of 20/2 cultivated silk. First dyed lightly in weld. Then dyed in marigold. And finally overdyed in madder. It’s absolutely gorgeous in the skein. And I am grateful for the light it brings into my life. When all else is dark and despondent, I am thankful that I can see and see beauty in something as simple as colour.

Tangled up.

I’ve been making warps. Many many warps. Mostly because I have a lot of yarn lying around… naturally dyed, undyed, synthetically dyed, commercially dyed… omg, that’s a lot of yarn. Rather than using handpainted yarn throughout the whole warp, I’ve taken to mixing it up with a bunch of other solid coloured yarns.

The six-yard warp will end up as two 2.5 yard scarves or shawls (I haven’t decided… there’s still a lot of handpainted yardage remaining that I want to use up)… each one will be woven with a different coloured weft.

The bamboo was dyed in a pot with a bunch of other fibres and took on so much less dye. The dye pot was a mix of cutch, cochineal and iron in various combinations with silk and bamboo in the pot. I probably wouldn’t wear any of these colours on their own, but optically blended together, they become more interesting. The weft will likely be plain undyed bamboo, and then the whole piece will go back into the dye pot. Maybe more cutch. We’ll see.

Finally, this is the silk yarn that came out of the same pot. Unplied DK-weight silk yarn to be woven with some 2-ply cutch-dyed silk yarn… it might be overwhelmingly cutchy brown. Hmm. But luckily everything can be overdyed and re-worked. In fact, I dropped a small plain weave silk sample that I wove last year into a cochineal dye pot earlier this week… and you know, I LOVE it. Multiple dyes, overdyes, piece dyeing… I want it.

Reconsidering Natural

Reassess. Reconsider. Rediscover. You’ll note that I’m having difficulty writing full sentences right now. I still feel a little hungover from this weekend… I was quite fully and mercilessly drunk on the natural dyes and textiles from Maiwa’s Natural Dye workshop, led by Charllotte Kwon, owner and founder of Maiwa…

What I learned and received from the workshop was so much more than I had expected… and not just in terms of the fabulous reference binder of swatches, or the notes, or the technique (which is really just measure and cook)… It was really the appreciation of the work done by artisans everywhere, the understanding that the knowledge about these historic techniques absolutely must be preserved, and the overwhelming feeling of responsibility in everything we do… We dye, we spin, we weave. But how much and what kind of resources do we use? How much do we consume? How much do we waste? How can we change, adapt, improve our process so that we live more gently?

All this, combined with the October 2006 “Green City” issue of Vancouver Magazine, the launch of the “OneDayVancouver.ca”, and a million other tiny, niggling questions and contradictions in my head, have just been overwhelming to say the least.

What can I say? I got more than I paid for… and definitely in a good way.