Green footprints

Lolly was talking about green-ness on her blog... and then Bryony got the itch. And I have to say that my knitting is a real contradiction in my green footprint! I looked at my Claudia Handpaint and realised the yarn was from South Africa, was dyed in America, and then flown to England and then put on a train to Scotland... oops!

So I am right to support my local craftswoman, Kirsty, amn't I?! I am eagerly awaiting the relaunch of Piece of Beauty's website - Kirsty was talking about selling more than one sort of yarn... although frankly the one superwash merino socky sort is good enough for me!

I am SO glad I didn't sign up to the STR Sock Club in the end - I haven't loved either of the club yarns / patterns from this round - they've been "OK" but definitely not worth £20 a pair of socks (in my opinion - please don't shout at me!) and a real carbon no-no. Lucky escape!

On this side of the Atlantic (but beyond the North Sea), my love affair with Wollmeise continues. Numenna has posted photos of more of his purchases of their yarn and oh my oh my it is just so yummy! I have earmarked my skein of Veilchen (Violets) for a pair of Clessidras. If Wollmeise started a sock club, now that would be really something!

On my green"to do" list is to make some "string bags" using the Knitty market bag pattern. So that we won't have to accept plastic bags at the supermarket checkout. I suppose I ought to use some sort of recycled yarn for this project, but I don't have any rip-worthy sweaters, and I don't fancy undoing someone else's cast-off from a charity shop. Funny that - I would WEAR a second-hand jumper but the thought of unravelling it and getting covered in embedded dandruff makes me cringe!

I dress myself and my family almost entirely in "recycled" clothes from Ebay's virtual shelves - allowing us to buy better makes than we could afford "new", and also to source a far wider range of raw materials than are available locally - fabric for sewing, wool for knitting. There is still the postage issue, but at least it is kept within the UK.

We grow things: trees, herbs, vegetables - though not as many as we could and should considering we have - ahem - 85 acres of land!

We have a green bin, but I am too lazy to turn it regularly, so it has yet to produce useable compost. We recycle all our newspapers, tins, glass and plastic bottles. Clothes either go back on Ebay or to the local charity shop, or sometimes turn into patchwork cushion covers. We have a "green tariff" for electricity. But unfortunately we burn coal on our fire - obviously we ought to be cutting up our fallen trees and drying them out for next winter. We have lots of energy-saving lightbulbs... except in the front room where we actually need to be able to SEE to read / sew / knit. This is a failing, because the spotlight bulbs last no time at all and give off more heat than the fire. Messed up there.

So I am certainly not complacent that I am doing all I can - cos I'm not! At the "high end", we live at the top of a wind-swept valley, so installing our own turbine should be a real consideration. I think the biggest "low end" impact of all would be to buy fruit and veg from the local box scheme (only a few farms away!) and shop at the butcher's for meat - it is the supermarket's plastic over-packaging which fills our wheelie bin to overflowing every week. Food for thought...