The first batch of the season is caked, tagged, and ready to go.
Some of the alpaca in these skeins was grazing at Robertson’s Farm Shop in Beauly last year. The fleece came off the animals in shearing season, went through a Scottish micro-mill for scouring and carding, and arrived here in Crieff as roving: ready to spi by hand.
What happened next took weeks. Dyeing multiple batches of cream fleece, blending and drafting the singles on the wheel, plying them into balanced two-ply yarn, skeining on a niddy noddy, steaming skeins to set the twist, labelling, caking each one by hand. One pair of hands from start to finish.
The base is Highland Shetland-alpaca- soft, with the slight halo and drape that alpaca gives a wool blend. The flecks are naturally dyed: marigold, lac, woad, and walnut, carded through in small amounts so the colour reads as scattered light rather than stripe or pattern. This batch is heading back to Robertson’s this week.
The fleece left there as raw material; it’s coming back as finished yarn, ready for someone to make something with. That round trip- field to shelf, by way of one studio in Perthshire- is the whole point of how I work.
Five Highland farms, two Scottish micro-mills, and everything that happens after the roving arrives is mine.
More handspun coming to other Scottish stockists through summer. The next batch is already on the wheel.
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