Eco-friendly Fabrics

I had a slow day this week – I had finished my freelancing assignments early; there is a fridge full of food so no need to cook anything; I was waiting for Greg’s drawing pad to create some sketches; and I needed a break from sitting at the sewing machine. When I saw one of my favorite fashion production bloggers talk about bamboo actually being rayon, I perked up.

I got on the topic of eco-friendly fabrics (e.g., organic cotton, bamboo, lyocell, hemp, kenaf) and before I knew it, hours had gone by. Although I can’t say I’m an expert by any means, I feel like I learned a lot about these fabrics.

Bamboo

I learned that the FTC is trying to get clothing manufacturers to label the fabric made from bamboo correctly. On the label, it should be called rayon made from bamboo, although this article talked about how there are questionable practices in using bamboo for fabric (among other interesting topics that she covered). However, certain bamboo fabrics (as certified free of chemicals by Oeko-Tex or GOTS) are much more sustainable than fabric like regular cotton. Here’s more information about bamboo.

Hemp

Hemp is a non-narcotic of the same family as marijuana and that is why it’s not allowed to be grown legally in the US. It has been grown in the US before however –both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp. Hemp is pretty easily wrinkled and can be scratchy by itself so it needs to be blended with other fabrics. It is super strong and durable though. Hemp fabric holds its shape much better than a lot of eco-friendly fabric out there, meaning it won't stretch over time. It’s one of the most eco-friendly fibers because 1) it grows super fast, 2) can grow higher amounts on the same acreage as other fibers, 3) helps stop soil erosion, 4) it doesn’t exhaust the land, and 5) it’s drought tolerant.

In my research, I read about a really cool green designer who’s trying to change the practices in clothing factories and the materials that are used. If you'd like more random info about hemp, check this out.

Lyocell

This relatively unknown fabric is made from wood pulp. It’s generic name is Tencel© and it’s technically rayon. There are lots of reasons it’s a good fabric to use: 1) Strong and durable, 2) Breathable, absorbent, generally comfortable to wear, and 3) it’s biodegradable. One of the best reasons to look for this fabric is that the US firm that produces it uses a sustainable closed-loop system, meaning the textile is created using renewable energy without creating pollution or waste, and the materials to produce it were recycle and reused. The downsides to this fabric are that it is hard to find; it wrinkles (although less than linen); and can shrink and fade (especially if dyed naturally). Also, it’s pretty expensive because producing it is expensive – I saw a Queen sheet set going for $150 online. Here’s more reading on this fiber.

Kenaf

This is the article that spurred on this tangent of mine. I had never heard of kenaf before, but apparently, it’s been around for thousands of years. It’s got a variety of uses – paper, ropes, and fabrics. Toyota even uses it for organic interior parts! It's still pretty hard to find though, but I'm going to keep looking for it in the future.

Organic Cotton

Organic cotton is expensive, but it does not use pesticides or genetically modified seeds. However, it can use more water at the start; dyes can be chemically-based (rather than low-impact or natural dyes); and it usually is shipped around the world to get to you, which is a big waste of energy and fuel. There's a great article about organic vs. conventional cotton on the Gaiam Life website.

Now, I’m not saying only buy eco-friendly, sustainable clothing. I’d be a total hypocrite if I said that, considering no fabric I have bought is organic or even produced in a sustainable way – it’s just not an option here. What I’m saying is that if we’re all aware that making fabric takes a big toll on the environment, maybe we will look at buying more recycled clothing or fabric, or buy only what we really need (like they do in Europe). Or you’ll even look into locally made clothes, like this lady made during her year-long challenge (one of Greg’s finds for me. :-).

Differences between Ecuador and Germany: Fruit and Veg

I think I'm going to do a multi-part series about differences between Quito and Munich because there are just SO many. It would be a huge post if I did them all in one. So, the first up is fruit and vegetables.

Quito trumps Munich in the fruits category because I can get fresh pineapple, oranges and strawberries year round. But surprisingly, Munich was better in the variety of vegetables I could get and the abundance of farmers markets. Here there are markets, but most of what's sold is not organic although the farms are probably within 150 miles of Quito. In Munich, I had my favorite farmer's market on Friday mornings where I would get my eggs and vegetables. I was more inspired in Munich to try out different dishes because I could get the vegetables there.

The variety of fruits here are amazing though. There is sort of an overall season - fruits that can be found all year, like pineapple, bananas, melons, papaya, apples, pears, pitahayas, passion fruit, coconut, etc. And then there are individual seasons - like Andean lychees was about 3 weeks ago; cherries and plums were in the winter; and we saw strange-looking bean pod fruits around end of January. Most of the fruit is fairly cheap - things that come in bags already packaged are $1, tomatoes are like $0.30, avocados are $0.40, and I can get a pineapple for $1. There are even people who hawk fruit to cars on the street. Coming up - I think we'll do the differences in transportation between the two countries (um, worlds apart!).

Yummy pitahayas!

We could have won a sheep!

When we were in Salinas a few weeks ago, we were approached by one of the cafe owners to participate in a raffle. The benefits were going to a local man who had been hurt in an accident. Naturally, we bought a few.

However, we had ulterior motives - the prizes were: a stove, a sheep and a surprise prize! We had to leave before the raffle was going to be called, but I think we had all pinned our hopes on getting that sheep. Even now, I still wonder what if...

photo credit: A Roger Davies from flickr  
Scoots could have had one of these as a buddy living up on the roof!

Museums in Quito

If you've read this blog when we were in Germany, you'll probably be well aware that we love museums. To recap, here's more about our museum adventures in Berlin, Nuremburg, Vienna, Istanbul, London, Jerusalem, Rome, Munich of course, and so many of the places we visited.

In Quito, we haven't been to that many museums. There's just so much culture to see and outdoors stuff to do that museums haven't been high on our list. But we decided to take a rainy weekend day to visit the museum of contemporary arts in Quito. To begin with, we had the hardest time finding the place within the Casa de la Cultura museum complex. I asked two people sitting at the info desk of Natural History museum and they had to resort to the internet to find it (even though I had directions to exactly where we were). Because of what they told us, we decided to give up on our search for that particular contemporary arts museum and check out the Casa de la Cultura itself. Well, when we entered into that building, the guard said we had to go to a different place and he gave us directions.

When we followed his directions, what did we see, but the museum we had been looking for at the start! And guess what? It was right next to the Natural History museum, literally the next door over. The girls at the info desk of the Natural History museum did not even know what the neighboring museum was! As you can see, I'm still amazed that they have jobs at the museum.

The man at the front desk was so nice - when he didn't have change for a $10 (our tickets were $4 total), he let us get in for the $2 that we scrapped together. Maybe he felt flustered because when we came in, the security guard was lounging out on the lobby sofas, half asleep.

They had two large rooms and several long hallway exhibits. In the first large room, the security guard in there had music blasting (it wasn't so loud, but it was loud for a museum). Thankfully, it wasn't pop Latin or salsa music. It was distracting. But even more distracting was how horribly lit the museum was - if you stood in front of a painting, your shadow would fall on it and you wouldn't be able to see any of the details of the painting. Very weird. You could see they were trying to put in these little LED lights, but they had hardly any wattage to them and basically they were wires sticking out of the ceiling. 

They did have some beautiful scenes of Ecuadorian indigenous people, musical instruments from all over the world, and costumes of various Ecuadorian indigenous folks in the museum. Greg and I both enjoyed it in the end, but it was a very different experience than the museums we've been to.

New Year's in Quito

One of the floats with effigies 

Wow, is this post overdue or what? Sorry! But still, it's good to tell you about all the festivities that went on in Quito around New Year's. We had just gotten back from the beach a few days before and took a walk through the "parade" of floats in Quito. Then, we met up with friends at a neighbor's place. You really can't start too much of the fun until midnight, but we passed the time well.

Yum, fried dough with honey!

Closer to midnight, we went to the local park for fireworks and more. One of the traditions here is to create (or buy) effigies of yourself, dress it up in old clothes and burn it at midnight. You'll see effigies being sold throughout the city and can include effigies of people from the past year, such as celebrities, cartoon characters (like the Smurfs or the Hulk), and politicians. This is seen as cleansing by burning the bad things from the past year to get on with the new year, all fresh and without constraints. We weren't organized enough so we just watched our friends burn their effigies. If you really want to start fresh, you're supposed to jump over the burning effigies. We were surprised that no one in our group got seriously hurt while doing that.

My favorite devil in the crowd - ferocious!

One of our friends brought fireworks and sparklers for us to shoot off at midnight. From our view, we could see miniature fireworks displays created by people like us all over the city. It was really cool to see and yet nice to be far enough away to not risk getting hit by an errant firework. Stuff like that can happen as we learned in Munich when people would get together at midnight as well to blast fireworks all over the city. Better to stay farther away and further up to see the best fireworks!

One last thing - during the day, throughout town, there were teens and young men who dressed as women and stopped traffic (literally) to beg for money. They're called widows of the old year. Some looked better than I do on a good day; others kept their mustaches, which ruined the intrigue.

Our favorite widows posing with a Chuckie effigy

I'm sure there's more fun that we had and traditions we saw, but that's about all I can remember right now.

Pics of Salinas Plant Life Up Close

Greg and I are in love with the macro feature on our camera. Here are some of the macro pictures we took in Salinas.

Fuzzy kind of plant

Cool mushroom

moth wing we found on the trail

Rocks near salt flats

Salinas - Carnaval Getaway

Can you spot the Alpaca?

This weekend was Carnaval (or Carnival if you're saying it in English). You may know it as the time around Fat Tuesday. In Latin America, this is when cities go wild with parties, costumes, and parades. Specifically in Ecuador, water, flour, foam, dye and other stuff gets thrown around by kids and adults alike. Luckily, our friends suggested going to a small town called Salinas about 6 hours from Quito. It was much calmer there - although I did pack extra clothes in case we got doused with water.

Salinas is this beautiful Andean town, which was almost perpetually shrouded in mist. We did see the sun peek out a little on our last day. The main draw of this town is that they have a few thriving cooperatives making cheese, chocolate, weaving (and yarn making), salt, essential oils and more. We saw many Ecuadorian tourists come through the town while we were there, but not too many non-Ecuadorians. I think this made the town more down-to-earth although it still catered to tourists with various shops selling local goods. Meghan, Tamara and I were so excited to see wildlife, aka llamas, alpaca, chickens, donkeys, and pigs (they're apparently called "chanchos" here according to Meghan).

On Saturday, our friends (above-mentioned ladies and another Greg), my Greg and I took a very early bus from Quito to avoid the crowds and finally got to Salinas after hitching a ride with in the back of a local truck (or "camioneta"). There's no buses out to Salinas so this is the best way (besides hiring a taxi) to get out there. We walked around the town and enjoyed hot chocolate and coffee at a little cafe. Our nights were spent in front of the fire in our hostal and playing games.

Salinas town square

On Sunday, we started the morning with a short, but steep hike up to the cross overlooking the town when it wasn't raining. The view from up there was fabulous - we're still amazed at how Andean farmers use up every inch of surrounding land, no matter if it's at a very steep angle, to farm. Later I learned from our tour guide/village youth, Alex, that there were caves behind where we climbed. One has two stories and the other cave houses birds. I'm not sure if he meant bats because he didn't use the word in Spanish for bats, but I don't know what other birds there are that live in caves.

Next, we took a tour to a few of the local factories. Alex took us to the factories that make cheese, chocolate (smelled divine), soccer balls, salt mines (salt is only used for animals now), and soy products. They had quite a few varieties of cheese (for Ecuador, that is) and we bought two kinds to bring back home with us. They also have a few shops in Quito so that might save us from eating the same mozzarella or queso fresco for the whole time we're here.

The chocolates also were fantastic and we enjoyed quite a few while we were there. We found a great fitting Alpaca sweater for Greg and cute Alpaca gloves for me to use on the colder Quito mornings.

See...Fog everywhere!

We just couldn't get enough of these guys!

Our group minus one of the Gregs

"Greg, I'm not sure I'm ready for my close-up!"

yummy cheese!

Salt mine pools

It was a great trip to get some fresh air (although much more damp and colder than Quito) and see a new place. I'd recommend stopping by Salinas if you're going nearby to a city like Riobamba, Ambato or Guaranda.

Carnaval "float" for the Salinas parade