previously (2008): Pony Fur / Pony Hair (I did eventually get that; it's the wallet i've been using for a while now)

Better than making leather out of Man Ray, I guess.

if I had a stingray leather item I would totally call it... Irwin's Revenge. lol.

that said one reason to play it safe (besides 'social ethics safety', i.e. other people are upset by something even though you're ambivalent about it) is just cause of import/export controls... a lot of items with varied sorts of materials can't be shipped / sold in various countries and the last thing I want to get in trouble over is something as trivial has happening to carry something made of something into someone's airport. E.g. Some countries allow mammoth (prehistoric) ivory, some countries allow ivory before 19xx, some countries ban all sorts of ivory altogether so nobody can cover for illegal poaching.. some with lots of other materials.

* same with

Just yesterday a colleague showed me a bracelet made out of stainless steel and stingray leather by artist Pat Pruitt. The leather looked a lot like the leather on the belt buckle on the left of the website image. It was badass, and also elegant.

They can also make yarn out of anything. Bamboo, musk ox hair, possum hair, cat or dog hair, newspaper. You name it, they can spin it.

Manta/sting ray leather? I've never heard of people using them for leather. Do they farm them? Get them from the wild?

Yes, a cow is no more sacred than a horse or a dog or a chicken. It all comes down to customs. I eat cow and chicken, but I'll never eat horse or dog. And I've said that if they ever come up with a decent meat substitute I'll be a vegetarian. However, after reading that "meat grown in a vat" article, I'm not sure about that.

from what I could find online; smaller stingrays are food items in some places

but environmentalists are a bit on edge about stingray leather in fashion because they say it's hard to count their populations

I did google for a while though before confirming that this wasn't a reference to a style and was actually skin from these animals

It basically gets smoothed out and ends up like Miko said a very pebbled leather

I think I'm just gonna not worry about it too much if I can get a sense that whatever animal we're talking about is not endangered. Plus I don't have to tell everybody OMG this is a real gator skin and not a croc pattern!!11 and thus invite comments from whoever finds gators/stingrays/horses/kangaroos/bison/buffalo horn/whatever too cute to harvest. I can just have it and rock it in stride and 99% of the time nobody cares.

I had come to a conclusion sometime earlier that okay, the pony is going to get killed for its fur regardless of what I do--but that doesn't mean I have to be the one the product goes to right? Ethical choices don't have to be 'effective' in changing industries, they can be personal exclusions. But now like I said, it's pretty clear that horses are livestock--there's SOOOO many of them. They're raised just for eating/skinning/etc... which makes me a bit less concerned about it

I imagine as I continue to indulge in my desire for expensive items I'm going to keep changing my mind on this from time to time...