How Our Wool Blankets, Yarn and Crafts Wool Are Made

It's quite a process taking wool from our sheep all the way through to a finished product. Each step has it's own challenges, requiring specialized skill and/or equipment.  Unfortunately, there are very few places left in the United States with this equipment and people who know how to use and maintain/repair it.  We are very fortunate to live in Charlton, MA once the woolen capital of New England and the original 13 colonies, because we are within a few minutes of S&D Spinnery, Wheelock Textiles and a fiber baler.  Without this proximity it would be impossible for us to convert our wool into these amazing products.  Moving large quantities of wool around is difficult and expensive.  We take the skirted wool and save it in large plastic bags, which we then load into our cleaned out livestock trailer, we drive it over to nearby Spencer MA where there is an old brick building and a few guys that still bale all sorts of fibers for shipping who are kind enough to bale our wool for us.  From there we truck it to S&D Spinnery in Oxford, MA where it sits and waits for a truck to take it to Bainton Woolen Mill for washing.  Once they wash it, it gets trucked back to S&D Spinnery where it gets carded and spun into yarn.  From S&D Spinnery it gets trucked over to Wheelock Textiles in Uxbridge, MA where it is woven into blankets, then trucked to their finishing location for fulling(washing), cutting, packaging and labeling.  While the wool is at S&D Spinnery being made into yarn we often have some of it pulled off the carding machines and kept for crafts wool.  Below is a series of photo's depicting most of these steps.  You can double click on the photo to see it in expanded view.

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