First soy, then bamboo… now wheat?
An interesting article excerpt on creating commercially-viable fibers from wheat gluten:
Some of the properties of wheat gluten fibers also are superior to soy protein and casein materials intended for biomedical applications, the report states.
Wheat gluten fibers would have a major cost advantage over both wool and silk, the two existing commercial natural protein fibers, according to the researchers. While wool sells for about $5-$8 per pound, and silk for $10-$14 per pound, wheat gluten fetches less than 50 cents per pound and huge quantities are available worldwide.
The full article will be published in the 12 February issue of the American Chemical Society’s monthly journal Biomacromolecules. They seem to post entire articles on their website, so stay tuned!
In other spinning and fibery news, Gandhi’s charkha (wheel) is once again in use.
And finally, if you’d like to win a copy of my book Crochet Style, Detroit News craft columnist Jocelynn Brown is offering one at the end of her very lovely review. In reading her craft weblog at the paper, it seems she does giveaways with all her review copies — cool.