I have not written a blog recently – mainly because I have been very busy handing over to the the new owners of the business. The photo above is of…
Now we have a pile of evenly organised fluff: clean, blended and oiled so that it will go through the next machines. At a small scale, the clean fibre can…
Here is an unskirted white Ryeland fleece on my kitchen floor. The grouting of the tiles will give some idea of the dimensions. It weighed around 2.5kg before I started…
Here at Blacker we thought it was about time to give our lovely stockists some love, find out more about them below! Name: Isla Davison – now retired but…
This is the full analysis of the survey results, which were summarised in our pre Christmas email newsletter. We had 72 responses, which is just under 4% of our mailing…
Here at The Natural Fibre Company and Blacker Yarns, we regularly have interns who come for work experience with us for periods varying between 2 and 4 months. We generally…
Here we look at three important aspects of fleece and fibre: consistency/style, colour and animal health. Consistency varies considerably between different breeds, within the breed and across the animal. We…
One of the joys of having our own mill, is that it gives us the freedom to experiment and try new things. For the last two years we’ve celebrated our…
Here are a few snaps of the “new” Fearnaught. It had an illustrious past in a mill at Banbury, now sadly closed … The machine replaces our “old” Fearnaught…
As many of our avid readers will know, we have been working on a new Blacker yarn range, being launched this month! This is a permanent addition to our ranges,…
An integral part of all yarns is carding; without it the fibre simply can’t be made into anything useful. It’s a bit like brushing your hair, if you do it…
We have been looking for an additional spinning frame for a while … we have had to make people wait for their worsted spun yarns, which are growing in popularity…