Crafter by Night

Crafting for Charity: Manos del Uruguay + hook = Happy Jeff

Last Friday I ran across a lovely post on Quesadillacraft about Manos del Uruguay yarn (well, I found it via Craftzine). Now normally, I’m pretty much a wash ‘n wear person with my yarn, but I do love this soft wool, and I was particularly drawn because purchasing this wool benefits a cooperative. I know, I know, I can’t help it. I’m just completely a sucker if you tell me it benefits someone. Besides, it wasn’t my scarf, so The Husband had some input in what he was going to wear on cold days in NYC around his neck.

Anyway, we travelled to a place called (oddly enough) The Yarn Co. on the Upper West Side to find something nice. This type of yarn is a hand-spun blend of merino and corriedale wool. You can get a multicolored version, but we chose the handspun semi-solid (from the purlsoho.com yarn source), and Jeff chose skeins of black, pewter and petrol (aka black, gray and blue-gray). Yowza! it was expensive, but it’s just a small scarf, and it’s very nice.  It was a tadbit irritating to work with, as the black yarn there was nowhere close to an even thickness.

That’s the scarf there on the right, which is a very long scarf, crocheted length-wise with a double-crochet row to give it a nice pattern. It has nice long, thick fringes on either end. That’s Jeff wearing the scarf on the left. You can see how it wraps about him that it’s a super-long scarf, which is just how he wanted it.  It was originally a different scarf with a slight ribbed effect, but that was scrapped because the yarns’ varying thicknesses made it impossible to make the scarf an even width.

If you make something with this yarn, post it to Quesadillacraft’s Flickr group and show off some more of the beautiful things that get made from this beautiful yarn!

History of the Cooperative – from ashleyyarns.com (distributors of Manos) via Quesadillacraft

“The Manos del Uruguay Cooperative was founded in 1968 by five friends. Their goal was to develop economic opportunities for the women in rural Uruguay. Although Uruguay has one of highest literacy rates in the world, there were and continue to be few employment opportunities for women.

Olgita Artagaveytia, one of the founders of the cooperative, had been volunteering at a village school in 1968. She and her friends were very impressed with the level of expertise in the craftwork produced by the village women. They decided to take the products to Montevideo and sell them for the village. This was a very successful venture and everything they presented was sold in one day! The name of Manos del Uruguay (Hands of Uruguay) was born.

The founders also helped the women organize socially and financially. They were committed to creating a professional organization that had legal standing and a strong marketing plan. The Cooperative was formed as a non-profit organization, committed to developing work for the women in the countryside. In 1976, working with the InterAmerican Development Bank and a marketing consultant, they opened a showroom in New York City, where they sold knitted and woven garments as well as Manos yarn. Over the ten years that the showroom existed, it employed Lola Ehrlich, who went on to become the editor of Vogue Knitting. Anne Simpson, also an employee of the showroom, created the space-dyed colour range and was the U.S. distributor for many years.

The original method of dyeing was done in iron kettles over wood fires. The dyes interacted with the iron in the kettles, producing a striated, faded quality, which was at first, seen to be a problem. It was a marketing consultant who saw the beauty in the colour shadings and named it Stria. Over the years, the process has been refined. Using stainless steel pots and steam heat, the dyers can now control the water temperature and provide a consistent range of over ninety colours. Manos Stria is a trademark of the product.

The Cooperative continues to be a strong, viable business, providing employment and income for the women of Uruguay.”