This photo illustrates the different fabrics obtained by knitting with Cotswold (on the left) and Shetland (on the right) – both as Double Knitting yarn. So both yarns will have…
Now comes the choice between carded woollen spun and combed worsted spun yarns. The photos above show a worsted spun Blue-faced Leicester yarn and knitted swatch on the left and…
A special yarn for 2018 At Blacker Yarns, we do innovation: to give our customers a unique experience from pretty much all of our yarns. For example our Tamar, Samite…
Above is the photo of our 2018 yarn … once upon a time, many years ago in 2015 we decided we were sufficiently old, at 10, to celebrate birthdays ……
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…
This book, produced as part of the Professional Smallholder Series, by 5m Publishing has the ISBN of 9 781910 455937. It appears to the the first of the series, which…
At Blacker Yarns and The Natural Fibre Company we endeavour to design yarns which are both fit for purpose and for the fibre from which we start. For The Natural…
As with home decorating, the amount of work done in preparation for spinning is (and feels like) much more than the actual final painting or papering! So far, we have…
Scouring and drying: the first stage of processing We are starting with wool, mohair or alpaca (or indeed cashmere) which has already been sorted and graded and is therefore a…
It is said that everything of a pig can be used but the squeak, and the same is true of fleeces! But as not all fibre is wonderful, so even…
Having described how the quality of wool is critically affected by the health and type of the sheep, it all begins again immediately after shearing! It is a real shame…
Harvesting in the case of wool means shearing. Pure new wool comes from live sheep and sheep are not killed in the shearing process! This blog item focusses on how…
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 at Blacker Yarns we’ve been busily working behind the scenes making big changes to our knitting patterns. Over the last couple of years our customer feedback survey has suggested…