We are small indie dying business set up in 2010 to produce high quality yarns and fibres dyed with natural dyes.
The business came about from some initial experimentation with natural dyeing by myself to produce hand-dyed yarn and fibre for my partner's insatiable knitting and spinning habit. I enjoyed experimenting with locally harvested plant material and applying some tricks from my past career as a plant biologist. Given the fact that I was out of work and there were no job opportunities on the horizon we decided to expand my dabblings and produce and sell dyed fibre, initially starting off very small and then expanding as we sold more and more yarn and fibre.
As we both believe in the importance of living in a more sustainable mannner we decided to make the business as environmentally friendly as possible.
We chose to stick with natural dyes as they are extracted simply using water (sometimes with mild alkali) from fresh or dried plant material thus avoiding the pollution problems associated with manufacture of many synthetic dyes. We only use dried material from British suppliers or fresh material, either grown ourselves or harvested locally in a sustainable manner. Some of the locally harvested material comes as a byproduct of volunteer work I carry out for a local country park. All home-grown or harvested material is grown without the use of chemical fertilisers or pesticides.
We try and avoid dye extracts except for indigo, which unless we grow it ourselves, is only available in extract form.
For mordanting we use alum (a simple rock salt), extracted plant mordants or iron. Iron can be toxic in large quantities but we only use small amounts of iron sulphate, the principal ingrediant of iron tablets. We also live in an area where iron regularly leaches into waterways from natural sources (much more than we would ever use) but is cleared out by aquatic plants before reaching our main river. We also use some copper as a modifier but follow recommended procedures utilising vinegar to minimise the amount used (and hence minimise the amount thrown away).
We do not use chrome or tin due to their toxicity.
All our yarns are purchased from British-based suppliers. We also seek out yarn and fibre from British flocks to further reduce air-miles although for some varieties that is not always possible.
At the moment we only offer our fibre as batts. This is because the process of natural dyeing, involving first simmering in mordant and then simmering in dye is quite rough on fibre and the structure of tops is soon disrupted. Therfore we have to recard the dyed fibre. This also allows us to dye colours separatly and then blend them so increasing the number of available colour schemes.
For posting we use what we believe are currently the least-environmentally damaging carriers. Unfortunatly our original choice f recycled, biodegradable carrier is no longer available but we now use fine bio-degradeable plastic carriers
We currently have a good source of recycled, acid-free tissue paper, but if that is no longer available will use other tissues manufactured from sustainable forests. If you can, please try and reuse the tissue when no longer required or put for composting/recycling.
All yarn/fibre tags are printed on paper made with a high quantity of 'waste' material to give them a unique look and feel.
