When we talk about wool, we almost always mean the fiber from sheep, although the term “wool” can be applied to the hair of other mammals including cashmere and mohair from goats, vicuna, alpaca and camel from animals in the camel family and angora from rabbits. As with many discoveries of early man, anthropologists believe …
Last week we talked about the importance of livestock management in the battle against climate change. It came as a real revelation to this city girl that large grazing animals are a vital and necessary part of the solution to climate change. Sheep can actually help to improve soils, which improves the soil’s ability to …
The more I learn about organic farming the more impressed I become with the dynamics of it all. As Fritz Capra has said, we live in an interconnected and self-organizing universe of changing patterns and flowing energy. Everything has an intrinsic pattern which in turn is part of a greater pattern – and all of …
The most popular type of cushion filler today is polyurethane foam. Also known as “Polyfoam”, it has been the standard fill in most furniture since its wide scale introduction in the 1960’s because of its low cost (really cheap!). A staggering 2.1 billion pounds of flexible polyurethane foam is produced every year in the US …
Sensuede is, according to its website, an elegant, supple, high performance textile made with recycled fibers. But Sensuede is not a fabric we’d be excited about selling, and let us tell you why: Sensuade is just a brand name for a polyester microfiber. Ultrasuede was the first of its type. But all microfibers are made in …
Microfibers are, as the name implies, synthetic fibers that are far smaller in diameter than “typical fibers.” As an example, they are 100 times finer than a human hair, one-third of the diameter of cotton, one-fourth the diameter of wool, and one-half the diameter of silk. The measurement that is used for measuring such fibers …
This blog post was taken largely from Leon Kaye’s article in The Guardian newspaper. Day zero for the Cape Town water crisis is predicted to fall on May 11, 2018, according to an analysis of current usage patterns and dam levels. The drought-stricken city will have to cut off taps to all homes and most …
We are always being asked about how to avoid chemicals which can harm you, so we thought it would be good to put together a list of how to go about it. Considering all the potential sources of toxic chemicals, it’s virtually impossible to avoid all of them. However, you CAN limit your exposure by …
Have a look at our new retail website, http://www.twosistersecotextiles.com! We haven’t talked about stain repellents for a few years (we last published a blog on the subject 4 years ago) and think it’s time to revisit the topic because of all the claims that some companies are making about “safe” stain repellents. Here’s why stain repellents …
We received this story from a reader, Stacey Skold, who is working on her PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her area of study is Human Sciences. With the birth of her daughter, she learned about the impact of chemicals on children and our world generally. She subsequently applied environmental education to her studies in …
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