Acrylic, Plastics, Hatz and Mittnz

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This is the newest Hat. A newborn size, garter stitch cuff, several rows of Eye of Partridge (Sl 1, K1 across, purl back, repeat) and then some colorwork for fun!

These are Mittnz 55. Baby mitts knit out of an angora blend, Kool-Aide dyed.
Mittnz 56 made from one strand of a wool acrylic blend and one strand of sock yarn.

And this is a group photo of my seventh set of eight handwarmers! All of the muffatees do indeed have either gussets and separately knit thumbs or thumb holes. Cuz you know, someone's gonna ask!

We've been discussing acrylic yarn over at NAS and one of the members stated:

Having worked in the petroleum industry many years ago, I can tell you that the main products from petroleum are the greases that come from it. Truth of the matter is, the gasoline you use and the diesel that the big trucks use used to be dumped because there was no demand for it. It's just waste in the original processing procedure. Kerosene was in demand for a while, but even that's now considered a waste product because they can't make enough money from it to process it properly. Think about that when you purchase your next jug of lamp oil.

Acrylic yarn -- along with plastic bags and all the other plastic products that have become a part of our everyday life are also made from waste products of the refining process.

I take this to mean that we're putting another step between these waste products and the eventual landfills that they will go into. Did you know that plastic bags can be processed and made into acrylic yarn? So can a lot of the soft plastic baby toys that get tossed out all the time because they're worn or too nasty to clean up.

So the things we consume most, gas, and diesel, are waste products, as are plastics. The cost of gas and diesel keep climbing higher and higher. Acrylic yarn hasn't gone up appreciably in a couple years now, toys don't seem to be that much more expensive, and the plastic bags are still being extravagantly given away at stores everywhere.... So could it indeed just be greed that raises our fuel prices? It would be interesting to know if the price of the greases spoken of have escalated as well.

It's suppose to get hot today: Strong high pressure overhead will bring near record heat to southeast Arizona today. Temperatures Saturday afternoon are expected to range around 110 degrees across the Metro Area. It is now 8:30 am, 92 degrees outside and 73 degrees in the house.