Our Yarns: Sustainable, Luxurious.

Luxurious yarns, small batch, made to be sustainable, ethical and environmentally friendly.

When we started our journey, Isabel could knit and I knew nothing.  Now, Isabel knits more and I know an awful lot more about how a yarn is made and what it takes to create a beautiful yarn that people love to use.

Making yarn, at least in our mill, is very labour intensive but so rewarding. We watch our alpacas grow their fibre for 12 months. When shearing day comes around Isabel’s mind starts racing as to what each fleece should be turned into. In the weeks following I set about trying to makes those thoughts realities. Sounds like fun, and it generally is.

Not all of our yarns come from our own animals, we just don’t have enough. We also only have alpacas, so our merino and polwarth come from nearby farms. That is another story to be told shortly!

All the fibre that goes into our yarns is first class. Australia grows some of the best merino and best alpaca fibre in the world and that is the fibre we source. It also happens to be all close by, so we are very lucky. In fact most of our fibre travels less than 250 km in its entire life before it leaves our doors on the way to yours!

Did you know that we have solar panels? They provide our farm and mill with 95% of all of our power, I think that is pretty amazing. This, along with the low distance our fibre travels creates one of the lowest carbon footprint of any yarn in the world!

Also, if you have ever tried our yarn, you may well see little bits of vegetable matter (VM) in the end product. The reason being is that our fibre, wool and alpaca, is minimally processed. Our alpaca is washed in rainwater with a low phosphate detergent. (The waste water then goes into our orchard to water our apple trees.). Our sheep wool is scoured for us in Geelong, in one of Australia few remaining scourers. They have to meet strict Environmental Protection Authority regulations, such as removing the lanolin from their waste water (which goes off to hand cream manufacturers) and removing semi-solids from their water too and sending it off for composting.  The scouring process only removes the grease from the wool, that is all. They offer another service, but we don’t like the sound of that so we don’t do it, that process is carbonising. Basically, they bathe the wool in an acid to “melt” away the VM. This acid stains the wool yellow, so they then have to bleach to wool to get it back to white. This sounds a bit like too much chemical treatment for us, so sorry but you can have the grass seeds, but know that they have been washed :-)

None of our yarns are super washed. I believe it is illegal in Australia, simply due to the chemicals used.  I guess after this process it is probably hard to claim that it is still really wool……?

We also do not use any synthetic fibres in our yarns, only animal or plant. We don’t need to help the oil companies.!

We also do not use any dyes, apart from the Field of Dreams. All our other yarns are as nature intended.

As I said, we select really lovely soft wool and alpaca for our yarns. We craft it, in small batches, into different, beautiful yarns for you to enjoy, all the while knowing that they haven’t damaged the environment like some other yarns.

Isabel and I hope you enjoy using our yarns as much as we love making our yarns.  Speak again soon.