On Saturday, Patrick and I took a road trip to take our wool to Blue Hills Alpacas and Fiber Mill in Bruce, WI. Like any good road trip, this one was full of good music and fast food. Unlike previous road trips (at least that I've been on), the van smelled like sheep because of all the wool; thankfully, we had air conditioning to keep the smell from getting too bad on the way there and to get rid of it on the way home. We spent a total of eight hours driving, so we had lots of time to talk about ideas for selling yarn among other topics.
Nancy, the owner of the mill, was more than happy to show us around the mill and explain the different steps in the process.
1. The wool has to be washed to remove debris and grease. (I don't have any pictures of this step, but she does it in a couple of large sinks – each washing requires a couple of hours.
2. The wool is then carded to get the fibers to line up. She showed us some hand cards that were used for manual carding of wool, a very long and tiring process. Then she put some wool through the machine carder and showed us how it works. There are lots of gears and pulleys and cylinders.
3. The carded wool is then fed into a pin drafter which further aligns the fibers to get them ready for spinning.
4. The last machine takes the wool and actually spins the yarn. The same machine will also ply the yarn, but it's a separate process than the spinning of the fiber.
We also got to see Nancy's sock knitting machines, her loom, and some rugs that she has made using Tunisian crochet techniques.
Patrick and I learned sooooo much while we were there. I am still just fascinated by the process and how the fleeces that we skirted a couple of weeks ago are going to become yarn in the next several weeks. And, it will end up for sale in our shop!
I’ll post when the yarn is finished and ready for sale in the shop so you can come see for yourself how it turns out!
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