Au Natural??

So I get this email from MaryMaxim.com about the new yarns they have from Bernat...they are called "Natural Blends"...okay I'll bite. Bernat makes great yarn, I love it, so the idea of them making some natural yarns sounds like a great idea....natural yarn that is affordable--not $25 a hank, I can live with that.

At least it sounded like a good deal....what it did was raise the question in my mind of what exactly defines "natural" in a blended yarn?

In my mind, in order to qualify enough to use the term "Natural" in my mind the yarn should contain no less than 60% natural fibre....why so much? Because it is enough to allow the addition of synthetic threads to increase the wear and tensile strength of the fibre yet still allow a person to enjoy the texture/weight/sense of the natural component with out it being over powered by the non-natural.

So what did I find when I pulled up the Bernat Pages???

Bernat Alpaca---70% acrylic, 30% Alpaca
Bernat Cashmere--65% acrylic, 30% nylon, 5% Cashmere
Bernat Soy--50% acrylic, 50% soy

Bernat Bamboo--89% bamboo, 11% acrylic
Bernat Felting-- 100% wool
Bernat Organic Cotton--100% organic cotton (funny, I thought all cotton was organic by nature)

So as you can see, only half the yarn would qualify by my standards and I think at least 2 of them would make people wonder about the honesty of calling them "natural" at all!

I understand that they are trying to give us a product they can keep low priced, but why use the word "natural" at all? Why not simply give it a snappy name...like "Billie" since Cashmere comes from goats or maybe "Kashmir" since that's the breed of goat it comes from.

This would remove the stigma of "natural" yet still tote the fibre content with out being misleading. How many people do you think are going to buy the Alpaca and be disappointed when they find that they paid $5/skein for only $1.50 worth of actual Alpaca!! Or worse, if they got the Cashmere....where they paid $5/skein and only got $0.25 worth of Cashmere!!

How did I get these numbers you might wonder....MaryMaxim has the skeins for $4.99, which I divided by 100 to find out what 1% of the cost was, this I multiplied by the %age of the fibre in the yarn (5% cashmere, 30% Alpaca).

This would be quite the surprise for any one who has a sensitivity to acrylics like my sock partner does. I know when my son was young he was real sensitive to wool (don't see it so much anymore), so sensitive in fact that he had 3 bouts of bronchitis and 2 of pnuenomia before we discovered that the carpet in the living room, while acrylic had an old wool carpet being used as padding underneath...we also discovered that one of the toys he got from his grandparents (an old one of his father's) was made of wool as well.

I would rather they had kept the name more generic making people look at the content...I'm waiting for the first complaint of "false" advertising...which I at least feel it is skirting.