Natural Dyes: 3 Colors for your next alpaca yarn

Natural Dyes: 3 Essentials for our yarns.

Here in Sierra Yarns we are commited with our environment and we try to keep our operations as eco-friendly as we can. When we talk about our organic naturally dyed yarns, we have a long list of colors we get thanks to our process. Natural dyes serve for organic cotton yarns, wool yarns, alpaca yarns or baby alpaca yarns, all of this fibers can get benefited from the beauty of organic colors.

Here we list 3 of our main colors and how do get them:

Carmine:

We get our carmine from the cochineal. The cochineal insect is a parasite of the prickly leaves. It has a reddish-black grain covered by a white powder. When they have reached their development (about 8 mm) they are collected with a brush and placed in sun or dried in ovens.

The final product is used to extract carminic acid, the main component Dyer. This gives us carmine which is similar to pink, purple and red. You can see some alpaca fibers dyed with carmine:

 Indigo:

The indigo is perhaps the most prominent dye used by ancient civilizations. It comes from the Indigofera tinctoria which is a species of plant from the bean family.

When dyeing with indigo, we must reduce it because its oxidized state is blue. Our yarns always contain an excess of dye that comes out with the first washings. We use indigo to achieve blue tones

Molle:

The sacred tree of Peru. The Molle has incredible dyeing properties, the incas used to cook their leaves and bark to get a yellow-like color but it can also work out for green tones. The tree also has medicinal properties which are used a lot in Peru.

Those three are our main components for our natural dyeing process. Remember that just as with every naturally dyed fibre, the color tend to slightly vanish over time (Cause of exposure to the sun) This vanish gives our yarns a beautiful effect since the color essence is never lost and the look gets really natural. So pick up all your knitting accesories and get one of this beautifully dyed yarns. You will be helping our environment and getting a really sustainable luxury product!