Description

We also sell a range of bright naturally dyed colours and Shetland fleece from our own sheep (see separate listings).
British wool – Shetland combed top in 10g cellophane bags, firmer than Merino so ideal for needle felting and can also be used for wet felting and other crafts. Dyed 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.
The joy of natural dyes is the wide variety of colours, shades and tones we are able to produce. Whilst it would, in many ways be easier and more practical to batch dye and standardise our colours, we are reluctant to give up the individual and experimental and we enjoy making the results of this available to our customers. Therefore we give each colour or shade we produce a unique name and photograph it with a label, so that you can be clear about what you are buying. We name some of the classic colours that each dyestuff produces after the dyestuff itself (e.g. woad blue or madder red), other colours are named using the Pantone colour system (this occasionally causes confusion as several Pantone colours are also plant names – please contact us if you would like to know what dyestuffs have been used to create a particular colour).
We have our own small flock of Shetland sheep and a rare breed Boreray ram, see separate listing for a range of natural and dyed colours in our own fleece. However, we source the fleece for this listing from the Shetland Islands, thus supporting the islanders to maintain the breed in it’s original home.
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.