Processing wool and making yarns is quite technical and we try with information sheets, emails and phone calls to explain how wool becomes a yarn.
We spend time and care, and plenty of work by hand as well as with the machines to ensure we get the quality needed and of course your fleece preparation can help a great deal with this. If you already own sheep you will know that they are not all the same as their wool varies. The next steps that you can take are:
- Good husbandry – sick sheep produce weak and poor wool
- Good and timely shearing – read our leaflet on this and don’t leave it all to the shearer or you will get what they think you deserve!
- Careful skirting – if you send us mucky fleeces with dirt, straw, hay, dye stains, leaves or which are matted at worst we will dispose of them or send them back at your expense and at best you will have a severely reduced yield and probably a poor quality result
- Careful storage – if you send us moths or rot we get rid of it pretty quickly – again at your expense.
Take care not to pass on dirt or send in poor fleeces which can create production challenges for us, adding to time taken and costs. If the fleece has problems for processing, we will contact you and try to demonstrate what these are and explain what needs to be done. We can show you with photos, or we can talk it through. We do have a great deal of advice and guidance, regularly updated, on our Advice and Information page and we hope this will be helpful in getting you the best results you want.