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Crochet Friendship Bracelet Tutorial

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Crochet Friendship Bracelet Tutorial

Who was your ten-year-old crush?

Somewhere around 1987 I knotted Corey Haim a black and purple friendship bracelet, then checked Bop magazine monthly to see if it pictured him wearing it. Imagine my sorrow twenty years later watching The Two Coreys on A&E! Friendship bracelets definitely outlived poor Corey: today Instagram has about 50,000 pics tagged #friendshipbracelet. But the good news is you don’t have to be ten years old to wear them anymore. And you certainly don’t have to hover over a safety pin stuck through your favorite leggings to stitch one up for everyone in your best friend tier. (more…)

Yarnbombs

Help yarn bomb San Mateo

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Help yarn bomb San Mateo

Calling all silly people!

If you’ve never yarn bombed before, this is a perfect way to start! And if you’re a pro, it’s a great chance do something epic because we have permission to yarn bomb almost anything! When the local Public Works department saw an article about my pay phone yarn bomb, they invited me to help beautify the city on clean up day with more yarn bombs. Now I’m inviting you to yarn bomb with me, either in person or by mail. (more…)

News

Tweetup With Eco-Friendly Designer Eileen Fischer

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Join me, eco-conscious designer Eileen Fischer, and special guest Practically Green for a tweetup this Thursday at 12:30 EST about the Lifecycle of a Garment. Just search for and tweet with hashtag #EFCSRChat on Twitter during that hour. I’ll be there talking with designers and crafters who, like me, reduce the demand for new resources by using existing ones. Learn more here.

Knits for Life uses yarn from the garment life cycle

In anticipation of this exciting event, I wanted to tell you a bit about how my products use the garment industry. My most popular products are made from a special kind of yarn spun from shredded European textiles. It’s called Berroco Remix. It’s made by mixing top quality fabric remnants by color, shredding it into a new fiber, and spinning the fiber into new yarn. This means it’s 100% recycled. Best of all, you can be more eco-friendly by starting your next project this wonderful recycled yarn.

Click here for more images of this yarn knitted up.

More about Remix from Berroco.com

“Reduce, reuse, recycle.  How are you greening your knitting? Reducing doesn’t seem like much fun and reusing generally means you’ve had to rip out a failing project, a painful part of any knitter’s process. Enter Remix, a new, 100% recycled Berroco yarn made using a low-impact manufacturing process patented in France. Remix is the result of over a year of collaborative work between mill and textile engineers. Read a bit more about this new offering:

How is it made?  Garments and high-quality commercially knit fabric panels left over from the ready-to-wear industry are collected from across Europe and sorted by fiber, then color. Because these pieces are pre-dyed, there is no need to dye them again, which saves water and prevents water pollution. Instead, colors are created by carefully blending garnetted fibers. Garnetted fiber is the result of shredding old textiles to make a new, fleece-like fiber that is ready to be spun into a new yarn.

All about Remix:  Remix is a soft, comfortable blend of nylon, cotton, acrylic, silk and linen. A tweedy, rustic look makes this an ideal candidate for casual knits, and its machine washability means any garment will be low maintenance and hard-wearing. The yarn comes in an abundant 216 yard ball and knits to a worsted weight gauge. Finished garments are immediately cozy, with the feeling of well-loved jeans or your favorite old tee-shirt.”