A collaboration between weaver, Juana, and her daughters, No.169 features white and blue striped base with bold red motifs. Pair with a contrast belt and shirt for the city, or chic white sandals for the beach-side escape. To create the rich red dye for the yarn, weavers look to Cochineal, a parasitic insect that lives on nopal cactus. It is a very laborious process to cultivate and harvest cochineal for use in dyeing. While some weavers have a small amount of the live bugs, it usually is purchased from a professional grower. The insects look like white spots when alive and small grey pellets when dead. Before adding them to boiling water, they are ground to a fine powder on the metate.
