Baby Yarn

Our goal is to be able to source and offer the finest options, especially when up against baby's delicate skin. Organic Native Color Grown Cotton is not dyed, is minimally processed and very soft. There are yarn companies that sell organic cotton yarn, BUT it is not always certified organic cotton fiber, definitely not fair trade and they use conventionally dyed colors. If you question any of these things always ask the company for the details. Based on these important points, Color Grown, Natural Tanguis & Vanilla Pima cotton is the cleanest choice (to read more on "fair trade" & the benefits of organic cotton see the organic cotton yarns page).

If you have your heart set on more conventional colors, or just for use as a detail, you also have the option of choosing our botanically dyed organic cotton, which has a nice palette of soft to medium shades...... or our GOTS certified, low impact dyed organic cotton. It will give you a more varied & colorful palette, but with the peace of mind that the yarn is certified through the entire process. Until now, there wasn't an organic cotton yarn that met every stringent rule through the entire chain under GOTS, including Fair Trade and having an excellent carbon footptint that is 100% offset through Carbonfund. It took us several years to find that source....and after a long search and a lot of creative work, we found it. Ecology Strings officially came into the world on November 24th, 2016.

Synthetic fibers or even natural fibers (including genetically modified remnants) that become rayonized through a toxic chemical process like bamboo, corn, soy etc. are nowhere near environmentally friendly. They are a nice idea in theory, but until genetically modified organisms are eradicated and the chemical process is replaced by a non-toxic alternative it will never be organic and will continue to harm the environment. If you are Vegan and used to using these types of yarns in place of wool consider that this means harm to everything in the environment including all living things.

When considering Organic Wool as an option think about these points. How organic is it? Is it certified organic? The U.S. government has certified organic standards in place when it comes to animals (what they eat, how they live, how they are treated and how they die). If one of these things is not strictly met, the wool that comes from these animals could be a problem and therefore not organic. This also does not take into account the probable non~organic/chemical scouring process either. Certified organic is very important for all of those reasons. You need to ask questions, especially when wool is marketed organic, but not certified. If an organic wool seller is not willing to tell you everything you want to know then run in the opposite direction. Also consider that wool can irritate delicate skin. I learned the hard way quite sometime ago, years before becoming a vegetarian, that even with the best of intentions even fine merino wool can cause a baby irritation. I knit a baby sweater out of the merino for a friend's baby boy. I couldn't wait to see the baby in it. Unfortunately he couldn't wear it because he had a skin allergy to wool. This was in a time when allergies weren't as common as they are today. So from that point on the only natural fiber I ever used for babies was cotton.

For babies, the purity of very soft organic cotton yarn is excellent. Even though the purest organic cotton yarn is lacking in more conventional colors (unless it is dyed with low impact or botanical dyes), the wide range of earthy colors from Natural, Dark Chocolate to Deep Green and the soft veggie dyed colors available are well worth the trade-off to keep the general purity in tact. Even in our own designs we tend towards using more of the natural, pima & color grown shades because they are the least processed. Making a baby item, like a blanket, out of pure organic cotton yarn is a real show of love and it will be appreciated and treated as an heirloom, cherished by being handed down from one generation to the next. And, if by some extreme chance a baby that grows into a child refuses to let it go, even when it looks like it needs to be permanently retired, the planet will not mind its eventual return to the earth.