Our heads are spinning folks as the first two months of 2017 have been some of the busiest we’ve experienced in the handcraft area. Our work to get our story out to more folks has slowly taken hold and we keep finding more and more folks who want our wool. Thanks!
Meanwhile we keep working at finding more products to offer. We expanded our warehouse capacity in our Boston-area warehouse and we started to bring in our scoured inventory just to get a handle on it and make sure we moved it to the folks who said they wanted it. When it got here we started to look at it as money that was tied up waiting for us to process and sell it. Then it occurred to us that you all might be interested in scoured wool.
So, now we’re up to 4 different domestic scoured wool types we’ve never offered before. We’re using their production lots to identify them. The L-(series) so to speak. The L-(series) began probably sixty years ago when Toppy Lindsay took up woolen scouring. For many years we had books with all the blend numbers and when Phil first started there were even samples of the last 50-100 lots or so (although it was just moth food in our old Summer St office/loft).
The L-824 is a steady type for us. It is a blend of the Romney and Leicester wool that we collect at our Boston-area warehouse. We’ve got a steady following of growers who bring us their wool and we’re always on the look out for more. The sheep are mostly farm raised and often hand fed in farm yard situations where they aren’t always outside grazing. Hence the color isn’t super white. It cards out to a nice offwhite and is the basis of our 21D series. 32 micron 4-5 inch staple and fairly light 1% or less vegetable matter. It is a useful blend item for folks with similar style wool or products.
The L-825 is a standard warehouse made product of local crossbred colored wool. We sell truckloads of this product and this is a first for us to bring in this product for handcraft use. We’re toying with carding some on its own just to make a new darker shade in our 20-carded series. It is generally 29 micron with 1.5% vegetable matter and 2-4 inch staple. Solid wool from eastern farm flocks.
Our L-827 is also a new product for us. Our #21DF Targee sliver has been selling pretty well and our Targee grower was reducing their flock so we had begun a search for a replacement. This is from a Fleece State warehouse and is from their fine 21.5 micron fleece line. The color isn’t great since most Fleece State sheep are farm yard raised and not encouraged to graze full time. That challenges the color and cleanliness of the wool. So we have 21.5 micron 1.5% vegetable 2-4 inch staple. It will card out whiter than it looks online. Anyway our Targee guy sold some sheep to a neighbor and their wool is working its way to us now, so we’ll see what happens here. The rate we’re selling it however we may have to get more already. Wow!
L-828 is just now going online (early March). It is from a large farm flock in the midwest. The grower has some of the best fine wool white and colored sheep wool in the country. They often sell it online for $20/lb or more on the single fleece online forums. Pictures of the wool on the sheep make anyone who knows wool drool. Since we’re cheap Yankees that don’t buy the top shelf or sell like top shelf, we figured the grower’s pieces would be as good as any warehouse or farm flock raised wool. Plus we could get enough to do an industrial sized run which is our method of operation (bring industrial products to hand and niche level users). 25.0 micron, 2-4″ staple 1% vegetable. It will card out to a nice brown (we’ll be showing that this month we hope).
So, without it costing us much we added four new products. So far it would appear we’re onto something as we’ve sold good quantities of all these types already and they’ve only been online in the past month or so.
This is the first benefit of our expanded space. We’re hoping to add more exclusive single fleeces or greasy wool lines sometime as well, but to date we haven’t found enough to make it worth adding to our site. Keep your eye out though as we’re always looking. And hey! If you’re local and have some wool you want to sell, check us out! It may not end up here, but we’re always looking for wool.