in anticipation of earth day, which is this sunday the 22nd, we thought we would highlight hoopla yarn, a new yarn that we brought back from a recent trip to the UK that’s based on the principle of  reduce, reuse and recycle!

hoopla yarn is made up of 1 cm wide strips of upcycled selvedge strips cut from t-shirt fabric. ordinarily, these selvedge strips would be thrown away, but the eco-friendly brains behind hoopla decided that they would upcycle and transform these strips into a delightfully colorful and bulky yarn. hoopla employs local ladies at fair wages in turkey who help to wind the strips onto large bobbins before they are re-wound onto smaller bobbins for sale.

hoopla yarn is the building block for some really cool crochet and yarn projects.  here are some of our favorites from hoopla’s photo gallery:

as featured in UK-based Handmade Living magazine

and . . . hoopla kindly sent us a bunch of free project patterns – yipee! — some of which can be made with just 1 bobbin of hoopla:

Sunflower Cushion (click to download .pdf)

Pretty Eco Bag (click to download .pdf)

Bag for Life (click to download .pdf)

and rest assured, we take our stewardship of the earth seriously . . . while we do import these yarns from the UK and then ship them to you, we purchase carbon offsets from our partner, carbonfund.org, to ensure that our handling of hoopla and all our product is carbon neutral.

celebrate earth day on april 22nd!