yearning for yarn

i love yarn. i don't have the luxury or the wherewithal or the budget to be a yarn~snob so there are many types of yarns i've not even actually seen/felt, let alone tried. it's insane how much a small hank of some yarns can cost!

walmart had been a good source of yarns. there was a nice selection available, from bulky to baby~fine, in amazing color combinations, all sorts of brands, and such. not so the case anymore. sigh.

yes, there are alternatives. they are fewer and fewer, it seems. hobby lobby carries quite a variety, but they are very Very VERY proud of their skeins and tend to charge way more than i'd be willing to pay on a regular basis. i've bought from others who are de~stashing, and that's always hit or miss. besides, i like to see and feel the yarn before i go plunking down coinage. ya know?

since yarn can be made from a hugely diverse amount of materials, you'd think it'd be more readily available. i recently was reading that many renewable vegetative sources have been used. i knew animal fur and hair was fairly tapped out, i mean, you can save your cat fur or your dog hair from grooming and have it spun into yarn that you can then work into garments. even silk worms do their part in the yarny demand. oh! but plant fibers!

sure, we know about cotton and hemp. but did you know that corn and banana leaves are fibrous and used in yarns either blended or solo? even the sea does its bit, sea silk is a lovely soft yarn using the cellulose from kelp {sea~weed}. bamboo is renewable and used in yarns. soy, too.

and there are many yarns made from recycled products. i've used caron's simply soft, which contains a small amount of recycled plastic. we certainly have all sorts of recycled fibers to be considered!

so all that got me thinking...kudzu. we have PLENTY of kudzu. kudzu produces a strong fiber, as it ages. however, the young tender shoots of kudzu would yield a soft silky~smooth fiber that i can only imagine letting run thru my fingers.

wow, whatta win~win that would be!