This textile designer is pioneering sustainable building materials from wool and fungus.

Scientists are creating wool rope for seaweed farms to help reduce plastics in the oceans.

Woola creates sustainable wool packaging supplies.

Links via Hand Spinning News and The Wool Wire, respectively.

Textiles are one our first technologies, and I’m sometimes surprised people don’t realize they wear cloth constructed from knitting or weaving on a daily basis. (All hail the knitted t-shirt!)

Speaking of wool, I’ve wanted a green wool coat for a few years now. I’ve found a pattern and ordered some fabric swatches, but I’m having a tough time finding a green wool coating that is appropriate. The emerald green contains nylon, and while I won’t be washing the coat and shedding nylon plastic into our watershed, it doesn’t feel right to use it. (Also, it’s way out of my price range.) (Also, the lining fabric is Bemberg which is viscose which has its own environmental production problems.)

The olive green is too lightweight. It’s also not as green as I’d like, although olive is a color I enjoy wearing.

The navy is perfect (100% wool, lining is silk) but it’s navy. I do love navy and have been told it is “my color,” but it’s not green. Would it satisfy my desire for a green coat? No.

I’ll keep watching for the right fabric at the right price, and save my pennies in the meantime. I have some black wool embossed coating leftover from an unfortunate fabric purchase that will make a nice coat. I can use it to make a muslin.

I still want a little flock of Shetland sheep. Bob says I’d be sleeping with them to try to protect them from predators, so I’m not allowed. I fret too much about the frogs as it is.