Why Knit Vegan?

My Empire of the Sun cardigan, made of a hemp-cotton-modal blend.While I was at Hawthornden last year I got into several conversations about veganism with my fellows, and on one occasion Colin asked, "Well, what are you knitting with?" At the time I was working on my vintage quickie 2.0, so I replied, "It's a bamboo-cotton blend." He seemed a bit disappointed that he hadn't caught me knitting with wool!Recently I overheard a friend talking about A Verb for Keeping Warm, a yarn company based in California. My friend explained that they started out by salvaging fleeces; the sheep had been sheared before their slaughter, but the wool was going to waste. I didn't make this comment at the time—I'd have made myself that annoying vegan, you know—but it astounded me that no one gave a thought to the dead sheep! I'm all for salvaging materials, but there is something unnerving to me about destructive or dishonest acts to foster creative acts like spinning and knitting.How is the wool industry destructive or dishonest, you ask? Well, you are taking the hair off a sheep's back, which is a sort of thievery, if we are to be frank. Then we ship the animal off to the mutton factory when she stops producing sufficient wool. I know you want to believe that we are doing the sheep a favor by shearing her and that the animal lives out her days on a sunny green pasture, but that's just not reality. For more information about how sheep are actually treated, please read this PETA article. I also highly recommend listening to Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's podcast episode from 2010, "The Shearing of Sheep."Here's the trouble with wool: it may be "nature's perfect fiber," but it does not belong to us. Even if you assured me that the sheep you spin from live in your own backyard and that you will never sell them for meat, I will say "thanks but no thanks."You may have noticed that I kept knitting with wool for awhile after I transitioned to a vegan diet, and I can only say that my knitting was a fairly large blind spot for me. There are many absolutely breathtaking wool and silk yarns out there, and it is all too tempting to push aside any uneasy thoughts of where it came from or how it was produced.And yes, it's true there aren't a ton of great vegan yarns out there...YET. But there are enough to get started with, for sure, and I hope to offer vegan knitting resources on this blog on a regular basis in the coming months and years. I'm particularly excited about Vegan Yarn out of British Columbia. (But I can't buy any more until I've knit some socks out of this lovely stuff!):Bamboo-nylon sock yarn from Vegan Yarn.Another thought I've had is that if Vaute Couture can make gorgeous coats out of fabrics that can totally pass for wool, surely someone can do the same for knitting and weaving yarn!And finally, I would like to offer you some proof that plant-based yarns can result in projects that are every bit as attractive as their wooly counterparts. Last month my new yellow cardigan made it to the front page of Ravelry!:(Thanks to Kath for sending me that screenshot!)