A chat with Dana of Pichinku Yarn and discovering naturally dyed yarns from Peru
Solène Le Roux
I discovered Pichinku Yarns when they launched their crowdfunding a few years ago and have had three skeins of their beautiful yarn in my stash ever since, waiting for the perfect project! I found it with my latest Magnitude Shawl.
I had the pleasure of collaborating with Dana, the founder of Pichinku to create beautiful kits for the shawl and we had a lovely chat together where she told us all about Pichinku, you can find the recording and summary below!
Three talented local artisans
Through her previous job in textile, Dana met Angela, Santusa and Leonarda, three sisters living in a very remote community in Peru. They have an amazing knowledge in natural dyeing passed down from generations to generations. They are in charge of all the artisanship of Pichinku Yarns while Dana directs the operations. Throughout the years, they have formed a deep friendship working together from their studio near Cusco.
Working with local plants only in small batches
Using ancestral knowledge, the colors from Pichinku yarns are obtained solely from local plants from Peru. They use 15 different plants to make their gorgeous color palette. Most of these plants they harvest themselves and while some are easy to find everywhere, others require to travel to remote areas and make a whole harvesting day out of it. To get these rare plants, they also hire locals who live in these remote areas to harvest and deliver the plants to the studio, paying them a fair price. It is a very slow process, and working only with fresh materials means that you can’t rush the process.
Supporting the local community
They are many knitters in Peru, Dana says that all women and a lot of men too know how to knit. She likes to leave the studio door open so that local can come in and look at the yarn. Because Pichinku does very unique artisan yarn, the price point is usually more than they can afford. So Dana decided to drop the price for the local community, and she also accepts payment in goods (eggs, peaches…) for a few skeins a month per knitter. That way, she can help out the local community and allow more local knitters to work with Pichinku Yarns!
The colorway of the yarn I made my shawl out of is called Golden Chicha, it’s made from the beautiful Q’olle flower, local to the valley of Cusco.
