Hebridean ewe and lamb feeding

Hand Spun Local Wool from Skye

Our hand spun local wool is sourced, where possible, from the beautiful Isle of Skye where the sheep are so clean! We process this fleece at our shop. It is hand sorted into the wool to be used for spinning, wool for felting, wool for wool stuffing for projects, wool to be used in rug making and the bits we really can’t use go to the Community Garden run by the Broadford and Strath Community Company to be used as mulch. Nothing goes to waste!

The wool for spinning is sent out to our spinners to work their magic. Skye wool ranges from double knitting to aran weight to a super chunky art yarn with great knobbly bits! We usually have a stock of Shetland, Jacobs Humbug, Hebridean, Cheviot and Texel wool but if we find a great fleece we cannot say no to, we will also spin it. It is seasonal as most fleeces are bought at shearing which is late here on Skye.

We are very proud to stock wool from sheep and spinners across Skye and our closest flock of Hebridean sheep live only three miles away. You may see them on your way to the shop!

Each hank expresses the unique personality of the spinner and shows the love and dedication they put into their craft. Our spun wool comes in woollen, worsted and semi worsted twist and creates fabulously unique garments!

We also have fun spinning, mill prepared and dyed fibres – especially gorgeously soft merino. This is spun super chunky, through to lace weight, so is suitable for a a whole range of different projects. We also spin wools/ fibres from other interesting animals such as camel, alpaca, silk and cashmere. For vegans we have manufactured fibres which contain no animal fibre, such as rose, tencel, seacell, linen, cotton and other arty fibres.

We have a stock of hand prepared and carded batts and mill produced batts just ready to spin as we know how much preparation goes into preparing wool from fleece!

In a nutshell – select the fleece, sort it into the fibres suitable for each purpose, wash and rinse in hand warm water, dry it, card it, spin it, ply it (put 2 or more fibres together to make a yarn), hank and tie it, wash it to relax it, dry it, ball it up – finally get to use it! I have calculated that this process BY HAND takes about 7-9 hours per 100g (excluding drying time)! Thank goodness for the Industrial Revolution!

For The Spinners Out There

We also stock spinning supplies for the budding spinner and someone is always on hand to help out any newbie. Come and join one of our ‘pop up’ workshops in spinning using either a spurtzler, a drop spindle or on a wheel.

Our wide range of beautifully blended roving is a joy to spin, we have some stunning lustrous silk blends and super soft merinos. We also create beautiful carded batts of mixed fibres on the blending board for that something a bit different…..

Why not call into our shop and browse our gorgeous yarns