malabrigo - About us

About us

We are a family-owned yarn company located in Uruguay and Peru and we have developed a line of Hand-Dyed yarns of incredible softness and wonderful color variations. Our products are made out of the softest fibers available and inspired by nature, as well as landscapes, places, art and day-to-day life. This is what we try to represent when naming our 21 yarn varieties and the range of over 400 colors they come in.

We produce yarn because we are passionate about it. We believe in the pleasure of knitting with high-quality, carefully designed, subtly dyed yarns and in the joy of wearing what is created with them.

Our wish is to continue developing yarns and colors to inspire people all over the world and, in return, be inspired by them.

Our story

malabrigo started small, when two brothers-in-law started dyeing wool in a kitchen pot back in 2005. After achieving good results, they started selling a few skeins to the US and, before they knew it, they had quickly grown to other countries in Europe and the rest of the world. To keep up with this growth, they needed to relocate to larger facilities and hire more employees.

More recently the company has moved all production to Peru, keeping the laboratory in Montevideo expressly for product development.

malabrigo employs mostly women of all ages, and always tries to give job opportunities to people that have fewer opportunities than the average individual.

Environmental statement; in the mill at Peru, we use as few chemicals as possible. We reduce the quantity of water used by systematizing the order of colors we dye everyday, meeting Oeko-Tex 1907/2006 CE standards, with a view to achieving the maximum energy saving.

Fibers

Most of malabrigo’s yarns are made with 100% Uruguayan Merino wool. Uruguay has one of the biggest wool supplies in the world, and for good reason as it is of an extremely high quality, especially in regards to softness. Our wool is 100 % produced by Uruguayan farms that allow their free - range sheep through the hills and are herded by actual old - style shepherds.The controversial practice of mulesing does not exist in Uruguay.When using Merino wool of a different origin, we make sure it is also mulesing - free.

Some of our yarns use other fibers, such as Silky Merino (a blend of our Merino and top-quality Silk), Mora (100% Mulberry Silk) and Silkpaca (Baby Alpaca from Peru and top-quality Silk). As well as the Dos Tierras, a blend with 50% of our Merino with 50% Baby Alpaca from Peru and our newest yarn Caprino (a blend of Alpaca, Cashmere and Merino) and Verano (100% Pima cotton).

We always ensure that our materials come from the best suppliers available here in Uruguay and around the world.

FAQs

Answers to the questions we are more usually asked

Any other inquiry write to cm@malabrigoyarn.com whatever your language is!

How did you get the name 'malabrigo'?

“Mal abrigo” roughly translates to “bad shelter”, which is by all accounts a curious name for a yarn company.

The name partially comes from the small village of Mal Abrigo in Uruguay. It was named as such because it is extremely windy and back when people rode horses and too often had to take shelter for the night, it was renowned for being a terrible place to stop.There are several towns of that name in South America (in other countries) but that was the one we had in mind.

We were also inspired by novelists like Garcia Marquez, Juan Carlos Onetti, and William Faulkner, who set their novels in the magical but imaginary towns (Macondo, Santa Maria, and the towns in Yoknapatawpha County, respectively!). In our minds, malabrigo is an imaginary and chilly place where the weather drives everyone inside to knit, or to cozy up to the fire, where wool sweaters, hats, and scarves are always useful!

How do I pronounce 'malabrigo'?

'maul' - 'ah-bree’ - 'go’

Where do you produce your yarn?

Our wool comes mostly from Uruguayan suppliers although we might sometimes use yarn from different origins, always making sure it is mulesing free. All of the Alpaca comes from Peru and the Silk from Italian suppliers.

The spinning, dyeing, classification and tagging process takes place in Peru.

Are the colors of the yarn in your photos accurate?

We work hard to obtain the most accurate colors in the photographs we show on the website. However, every computer has different monitor settings. For this reason we cannot ensure that the colors all monitors display will exactly match the color of the yarn.

A little bit from home

We would like to invite you into our home, to get to know us a little better. For 11 years now you have known and worked with our products, which are well received all over the world.We don't have the words to express how thankful we are for that. We wanted to give you a little inside look at where those products are created and what inspires them.We have been thinking about how to do that for a while, and finally it's here, a small glimpse into our home, and our surroundings. We hope you enjoy it!

About dye lots

When we dye our yarns, the same formula is used each time but every batch of yarn is assigned a different dye lot number. The fact that it is a handmade process contributes to the variations between dye lots. The differences from one dye lot to another can be very subtle, or extremely noticeable, specially on variegated yarns.

When we assign a dye lot number the main use is to identify which skeins can be labeled and packed together. After our quality control team checks the skeins, they go to the labeling section and then are put in bags of five or ten (depending on the yarn).

Once the bags get to the yarn stores, most skeins go to different shelves where they can get mixed. The dye lot code is really helpful when you try to find skeins that match.

Unfortunately, we don't have a record of which yarn store receives a specific dye lot and it's impossible for us to find out where you can find the same dye lot skeins.