Description

These luxurious drum carded batts have been created with loving care and attention to detail, each lock has been selected and any ‘rise’ removed. Suitable for hand spinners or felt makers, ‘Cerulean Sea’ is made from a blend of the shearling Shetland x Gotland fleece from ‘Max’ one of our lovely flock of organic, conservation grazing sheep, who help to manage the biodiverse chalk grassland slopes of Hardwick and our community orchards. This was Max’s first fleece and it is absolutely baby soft with a light crimp, we have dyed some of it a dark blue with Indigo and left some a natural white and then carefully blended it with some fleece we have dyed with woad from a Valais Blacknose that was gifted to us by friends. The Valais Blacknose has a long lustrous fibre that gives this batt structure and makes it an absolute dream to pull into strips and spin worsted style.
‘Marsh Sprite’ is made from a blend of ‘Ethel’ the pure Shetland matriarch of our organic flock and some British Alpaca from a local herd. Ethel’s fleece whilst soft has a fairly long staple for a Shetland and adds structure to the batt, we blended a very small amount of her natural grey with the lighter part of her fleece that we had dyed green with weld and woad and added some light turquoise Alpaca (also dyed with woad and weld) to give the blend a luxurious feel.
We blade shear each of our sheep by hand (which allows us to wait until the fleece is ready), the fleeces are then carefully sorted (plant matter removed) and lower grade wool separated for use as packing material. Each fleece is gently but thoroughly washed in well water and eco-friendly wool scour, dried in the fresh air and then either kept as the natural fleece colour or naturally dyed by us at our small outside dye house in Oxfordshire, using well water and plant dyes, many of which are grown or gathered by us in a sustainable way from the organic Estate on which we are based. When we do use imported dyes we source these directly, or from a company with a strong ethical sourcing policy.
After dyeing the fleeces are  carefully picked over a second time and then either packed for felt makers or carefully drum carded by hand ready for spinning.
We have a policy of buying no new packaging material for use in posting out parcels, we re-use old packaging gathered from other local businesses, individuals and schools. We hope you will enjoy receiving your parcel, whatever shape and size it is, knowing that it has a little less impact on the environment.