ABOUT
In December 2017, Cappie and Maja went on an adventure to Oaxaca City, Mexico. Part of their explorations of this region famous for its textile production included a 3-day natural dyes workshop with Elsa Sanchez at Teñido a Mano.. While learning the fascinating chemistry of natural dye materials, the two friends came up with an idea rooted in the nonsense environment of San Francisco and Silicon Valley - a vertically integrated, farm-to-knitting-needle, naturally dyed wool startup, but instead of coarse sheep's wool, they'd invest in luxurious alpaca wool. Hence, the idea of Natural Death Wool was born.
It was something completely different to execute on what originally seemed like a joke. In November 2018, Cappie went home to his family's farm in Merino, Colorado, and just happened to stumble upon an extremely good Black Friday deal on pasture fencing. The rest, as they say, is history, and half a year later, after much help from many friends, Cappie and Maja added 4 quirky alpacas to the Natural Death Wool family and began the process of caring from them, shearing them and processing their wool.
The girls were acquired in June 2019, meaning that their first shearing occurred the following summer at the height on pandemic. With the help of Cappie's family and friends, we were able to get the alpacas shorn and began the lengthy process of learning how to wash, card, blend, dye and spin their yarn into wool by hand. Fortunately, there was no better setting to learn this process than the pandemic which provided ample opportunity to pursue new at-home crafts and hobbies. Now, three years later, we are ready to bring the magic of this whole experience to all of you.
A special thank you to everyone who helped with building the alpaca pasture, caring for the alpacas, constructing wool processing equipment, dyeing, spinning, and general support. This includes Cappie's entire extended family, especially Sammie, Perry, Zach, Cecil and Brooke, and many many friends, including Bryan, Emi, Jonté, Melanie, Dan, Eric, Eli, Mark and many others.
