Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Lions, Tigers and brands "Oh my!"


I'm probably going to be struck down by the gods of knitting for saying this...
Props to Lion Brand (yes I said it) for trying to change their image. I just got a catalog in the mail yesterday and decided to take a look before I threw it away... What I found was pretty surprising. The projects aren't hideous! Someone, somewhere, be it a stylist, editor, knitter or photographer, managed to make those yarns look ok. Now, it's nothing new. In fact some of the designs/ photos look almost stolen

This one is Lion Brand:

And this one Blue Sky Alpcas:

ok. So kids often stand in a similar way... sure, but what gets me is that the LB sweater looks like a Blue Sky Brand pattern & yarn and I think we all know to whom my loyalty goes!

It's kind of a real shame that they're recycling this simple, garter stitch sweater, back to basics look, that's been done a million times. And Organic Cotton?? Seriously? I just don't trust it. Yup, ORGANIC is officially a trend. I'm not saying their yarn isn't organic, what the h*ll do I know? But I couldn't really think I was doing something good for the world, buying yarn that was sent via gas guzzling truck to thousands of Michaels nation wide.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not an avid knitter, so I don't know much about the relative merits of different brands of yarn, but I will that say cotton is one thing that it's really good to buy organic, because even though it's not a food crop, it's typically rotated with peanuts, so all the chemical pesticides and fertilizers used to grow non-organic cotton are going into the same soil that produces peanuts. It's dismaying how hard it is to find organic cotton clothing, so I'm glad for anything that raises the profile of organic cotton, even if it is some crappy nationwide brand.

Besides that, since we don't live in the South, any cotton you get is going to be shipped long distances in gas-guzzling trucks.

bellamoden said...

The real shocker is that Lion Brand's organic cotton is much more expensive than Blue Sky Alpacas's. For real!