It all started on a trip to Peru. Laura was touring fair trade mills across the region and admiring the female artisans as they sifted through mounds of recently sheared fiber. These women sort the piles by softness and can feel the difference in the fiber exclusively through touch. As she watched the sheep ‘tops’ get sorted and the remnants pile up, she was intrigued. Every year mills end up with thousands of pounds of leftover, high quality ends from the yarn they spin and dye for their various exporters around the world. These otherwise luxurious leftovers could easily get bundled together and thrown away. In an effort to save them from landfills, and to close the gap between high quality yarn and accessible pricing, Laura made a commitment. She asked that the wool and alpaca pieces be spun into a new yarn, giving them a second life and creating what we know today as Yarn Citizen.