small steps

I was going to show you what I have been up to, but somehow the usb cable is missing that enables me to download pictures from my camera. So I have to do this sans photographs.
Over the past week, I was making another commissioned piece for Decadent Fibers, for them to take down to Stitches East. It was the scarf from the cover of the 25th anniversary issue of Vogue Knitting. It's a Nicky Epstein design, with 25 flowers that you have to make individually and then attach to each other and to a sort of "framework" of zig zags. While it wasn't hard to do, it was quite a bit more time-consuming than I had anticipated, and I even had to deliver it in pieces to be sewn together by them on the roadtrip down to Baltimore. I was glad in the end to see it go, as my hnds were starting to hurt. Size 3 needles (which I usually love), so many small pieces...

Today, I want to start a little campaign that I am calling Small Steps, to help save the planet. I guess I am getting used to the soapbox. :)

So today's Small Steps involves your dish detergent.

I switched over to environmentally friendly dish soap several months ago, and was recently delighted to find out that Seventh Generation is now available at Target. I remember the Seventh Generation catalog from years ago, printed with soy ink on recylced paper. Then, their products became available at the local health food store, then at the grocery chains, and now I see them at the big box store. More power to them.

My bottle of dish detergent says the following:
"If every household in the U.S. replaced just one bottle of 25 oz. petroleum based dishwashing liquid with our 25 oz vegetable based product, we could save 81,000 barrels of oil, enough to heat and cool 4,600 US homes for a year."

There are many more brands out there for you to choose from. These guys have a whole line of environmentally friendly cleaning products and paper products. In light of our natural resources becoming more and more scarce, it makes sense to switch.

Getting off the soapbox.