Our Mill

The Wool Journey Part 10: preparing to spin, part 2

Now we have a pile of evenly organised fluff: clean, blended and oiled so that it will go through the next machines.

Timely tutorial: skirting a fleece ready for spinning or felt-making

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 skirting it.

Meet our lovely stockists!

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 a lovely person and we have retained this item for her views

Company name: BritYarn – United Kingdom - now closed

Results of the annual survey of The Natural Fibre Company customers

This is the full analysis of the survey results, which were summarised in our pre Christmas email newsletter.

The Wool Journey Part 4: Wool Attributes Amongst Breeds, Natural Colour and Health

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 can have Gotland sheep, all of which have lustre longwool, with wide variations of thickness and crimp between different animals and a range of these across the body of an individual.

Blacker Brushwork - Our 12th Birthday Yarn

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 birthday in September by creating a limited edition - one of a kind - yarn, and this year is no exception. Like all our yarns the development of Brushwork was an organic process, which began with the fibre.

The "new" Fearnaught

The machine replaces our "old" Fearnaught which was the last remaining machine to have made the journey from Lampeter to Cornwall ...

Creating a new yarn range: Samite

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, designed to complement the others, providing a further range of textures and fabrics, a luxurious feel and adding to our colour palettes. The colour cards are available right away and the full launch is on 23rd March, 2017.