Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Yarn made out of WHAT?

What a day! Although I am going to write about my visit in detail in February, I am just too excited to wait. I visited with Andrea Waller at Seaport Yarn in the Financial District today. She was so nice and welcoming and wonderful, and she educated me on some fascinating things about yarns. I thought I had heard it all, researched it all, and knew it all, but nooooo. What a surprise.

There is yarn made out of milk?

I'm still in shock. It's not really milk, but two byproducts of milk: curds and whey. There is a company that mixes whey and curds with cotton or wool to make yarn.

(Read up on curds and whey here if you don't know what they are.) "Creamy Yarn" is made out of 80% milk and 20% cotton; "Half and Half" is 50% milk and 50% wool. I held it in my hand. Especially the Half and Half was unbelievably soft.

Andrea also had corn yarn, which was surprising but not nearly as shocking.

Corn yarn is made out of the husks of corn, which is somewhat imaginable, I think.

The company making these exotic (or should we rather say "domestic") yarns is
Check them out if you don't believe me, or check them out anyway. :-)

More on my visit in February when I will give Seaport Yarns its due space. As always, thank you so much for visiting.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Holy wow. I knew about the corn yarn, I have NEVER heard of the milk yarn. Was it expensive? Did you buy any? I want to know more about this yarn!

Iron Needles said...

I am so going to have be on the lookout for yarn from milk. The corn stuff I have seen, and like.

Like your stuff. Very informative!

cici said...

I have some Kollage in my stash. I am going to make the market bag. I like it a lot,,Nice blog... it looks a lot like mine heheh

Sinje Ollen said...

I found "creamy" at thia site: http://www.yarnmarket.com/knitting/Kollage_Yarn-589.html, and "cornucopia" (corn yarn) here: http://www.seaportyarn.com/store2/glvirtualtones/products.php?cat=307

:-)

Anonymous said...

Yarn out of milk? Curiouser and Curiouser. I wonder what processing has to be done to get it into a workable form.