Lammermuir Wool sells Shetland Yarn at shows and online. We keep a small and super-friendly flock in East Lothian, Scotland.
I generally get our own single-flock fleeces spun in Cornwall and Yorkshire, then I hand-dye them in small batches for sale. I mix my dyes to match the colours that I see in the landscape around me.
I could talk about sheep, and wool, for Scotland, and one of the things that has become very clear in recent chats is that local farmers want their wool to have a value in today's market.
All too often, they spend more on getting it sheared than they are paid for it. And some fleeces just get dumped on the farm. It's such a waste of a very brilliant, natural product!
As people who love their sheep, we want to show the world that our wool has value. Here is my neighbour Kelvin with some of his Lleyn fleeces. He is keen to see his fleeces make the journey from farm, to spinning mill, back to my home for hand-dyeing and then out to our customers.
In the past year, we started having our neighbours' Shetland fleeces spun as part of our own consignment to the Mills. Now, through our chats, we have been able to source some gorgeous local Shetland and Lleyn fleeces from 5 neighbouring flocks and farm.
And we went to pick up some shearling Cheviot from Ballinloan Farm in Sutherland in August this year - it was so light and fluffy. Like clouds. Even as I sorted through it, I was smiling...
Taking on this amount of fleece from other flocks is a whole new venture for us and we just don't have the cash to see if this could be commercially viable. Everyone wants it to work - we just need a bit of help to get things started.
Why can't we fund this project ourselves?
We wanted to, and budgeted to do that. However our budget was based on getting into a couple of yarn shows last spring, and they didn't accept us. That is just the way things are sometimes, but it left a £6k whole in our plans, and left the fleeces sitting in our conservatory.
We don't really want to have to ask anyone for financial support - but we hope that asking for Pledges for Yarn - whereby you are basically pre-ordering the yarn that we would have put up for sale - is a better way of doing things.
Could you help us to raise the lump sum that we need to commit to having this wool spun?
Your backing will provide the funds to process about 200kg of beautiful local fleece into amazing yarn. The plan is to get a mix of yarns from the Natural Fibre Company in Launceston. If we raise more - we can spin more!
My plan is to get the yarn spun into two beautiful products: a woollen-spun bouncy yarn, and a tougher worsted-spun yarn . Some of the yarn will be hand-dyed by me, and some left in its natural un-dyed state.
Who are we?
Lammermuir Wool is a small wool business which has been running since 2017. It's run primarily by Suzie, originally from North Devon but settled in Scotland since 1990. I've had the Koru Lammermuir flock of Shetland sheep since 2007. My under-shepherd, and husband, Paolo puts more into the flock and business than he ever thought he would have to, and is paid in the occasional jumper.
We are assisted by the YarnLab Rosie. Her idea of help and mine are not always the same thing.
We love where we live, and are surrounded by small farms and holdings where sheep certainly outnumber people.
Why do this?
I spend my life surrounded by crafters who love wool and enjoy knowing where their yarns come from. I am proud of the story that I can tell you about my own flock, process and yarn.
But many farmers are missing out on this sense of value and its connection to the fleeces that they produce. I want to make a start - in my local area - of changing that.