Eco-Crafters Unite! I L-O-V-E The Kunin Group & their “Ecospun” cruelty-free felt!

WOW! I have been overwhelmed by emails asking me for details on the cruelty-free, super “Green” (with a capital G) felt I mentioned in this week’s W.I.P. Wednesday post. I feel so popular!

I was so excited when I saw all the email love, some from people who were interested in the cruelty-free crafting possibilities, and others who wanted more info on the “recycled” aspect of this medium. To quote an emailer “this sounds a little too good to be true.”

Yet it is true.

To create those delicious-looking donuts, and these heart pins, and many other gifts & crafts, I used “Rainbow Classicfelt” from The Kunin Group. Go check out their website because I think it’s just amazing the different kinds of felt they offer, and all of it created from post-consumer recycled plastic bottles!

I first discovered this amazing felt last year when my mum brought me a bag of crafting supplies from America when she came for a visit. I’d found some polyester crafting felt here in France, but I didn’t like the feel of it. She’d stumbled upon some various felt squares and saw they were wool free so grabbed a few colours for me.

Love at first stitch! Or cut, I could say. While it isn’t as dense as traditional wool felt, it has a lovely feel and is wonderful for bags like these :

or other projects like this :

When I was in the U.S. on vacation this past summer I bought nearly an entire suitcase full of Kunin Group felt (yes, nearly an entire bag full. You should have seen the look on Monsieur Fish’s face when he saw that). I bought mine at Jo-Ann’s Fabrics in Rochester Hills, Michigan. I know many of you are in Canada and Europe, so don’t fret. Visit their Where To Buy page – there are lots of locations around the world…though none in France. Snif.

I would just love to get my hands on some of their Plush Felt which I couldn’t find at last summer. It is all plushy and soft and would be perfect for making softies and little stuffed animals, which are going to be de rigueur with Spring Solstice and other such holidays approaching.

So there you go! Vegan crafting at it’s best!

Happy Mail post coming next, promise!

It’s Getting Hot In Here… Thoughtful Fridays

© Getty Images, E Magazine Graphic

Here’s a rather mind-boggling quote for this week’s installment of Thoughtful Fridays:

“According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the American meat industry produced more than 1.4 billion tons of waste in 1997—five tons for every U.S. citizen and 130 times the volume of human waste. Michael Jacobson, the longtime executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, adds the fact that just one midsized feedlot churns out half a million pounds of manure each day. “The methane that cattle and their manure produce has a global warming effect equal to that of 33 million automobiles,” the Center reports in its book Six Arguments for a Greener Diet.”

Take a peek at this great article by Jim Motavalli, “Meat of the Matter” in the July/August issue of The Environmental Magazine.

For the environmentally well-versed, this is not a ground-breaking article by any means, but it’s a great read, and will arm you with all sorts of wonderful statistics to fire at the folks who claim to be “green” while feasting on dead animals.