A couple weeks back I visited Gretchen’s Wool Mill while I was down in Monroe. I found out about her because she also raises a few East Friesian dairy sheep. She kindly allowed me to tour her mill and take a few pics for you!
The wool first gets washed in a big sink in water that’s 115 degrees. From there, it gets put into this huge thing that looks like a washing machine. It’s called an Extractor; it spins the wool and removes most of the water left from the washing.
The wool then gets layed out on these drying racks to air dry.
A customer can pick up their wool once it’s clean, or pay for additional services, such as picking and carding. The particular picker shown below can be pretty dangerous to operate and one should wear a heavy apron to avoid giving oneself a masectomy! It operates like a swing; picture one of those dragon swings from carnivals only with spikes coming out the bottom; that’s rather what this scaled down version is like. As the spikes swing back and forth, they knock out little bits of debris and the ‘second cuts’ (shorter bits of wool that can’t be used for spinning.)
Once picked, the wool can then be sent to the carding machine. A person can hand card their own wool with paddle carders, or even use a drum carder that gets cranked by hand (I’ve got one like that here.) But to really get huge lots of wool done, a mechanical drum carder is a huge benefit. Plus, instead of small batts of wool, you end up with huge batts that can be used for things such as quilting.
At this point, the wool is ready to go home to it’s owner, where it can either be used for quilt batting, spinning or a variety of other projects.
Yesterday Darling and I brought our small, hand operated drum carder to the market where we demonstrated how we card our wool prior to it being spun. We had a lovely shade of wool which I thought looked rather like a nice wig, so I dared Darling to wear it around the market for an hour. She pretended to protest, but ended up wearing it the entire day. I’m not really sure, but perhaps the fact that we were telling people we were a wig company had something to do with lack of sales???
Another thing I’ve never really thought about!! I love the pictures of Darling..priceless!!!
OMG!! Darling is too funny!
OMG Darling !!
Ewe are way too fun 🙂
Darling posing as Bozo at the market – all she needed was the red nose! LOL I am sure she brought a smile to more than one face!
The new little Phantom is a handsome boy! 😉
neat. I kind of fancy the wig 🙂
I have to say, I do not know much about sheep and wool.
I am learning A LOT here!
Very interesting about the wool!!
Darling does just need the red nose and she’s all set with that hair…..I mean, wool, on!!
I need me one of these setups so I can make some money from all the dog hair I sweep up — seriously, it doesn’t look all that different from the wig!
Speaking of Phantom of the Opera, your Little Darling looks like the Phantom of the Circus. Tell her that bubble belongs on her nose, not on her lips.
You guys are too much fun. So I’m gonna go vote again.
too funny! That last picture with the gum made me nervous, I kept thinking, Oh I hope she didn’t get any of that gum in the wool!
🙂
That was very interesting. I never though about all that going into just to have wool. Only your child would wear that!lol She looked tooooo cute. She is a dare devil.
Have a good one.
Laura
ROFL. Darling cracks me up. Love the wig. She should consider glueing it on for a more permanent affect.
Of course, if she wants to go the environmentally-safe route, she should try pine sap. I hear it’s pretty sticky.
[…] I know Gretchen. Oh…the redneck woman? No, not that one, silly! I know the one with the wool mill. She also makes cheese and agreed to let us come down and watch the process. I’m not […]
[…] 28th, 2007 by desperatehorsewife Not long ago I posted about Gretchen’s Wool Mill. I left a fleece with her to be washed while down there learning to make cheese a few weeks back, […]
Where can one purchase a crank wool carder?
Many thanks MK
I have an old wool quilt. The wool would definitely benefit from wash and re carding into a new queen size batt. Do you provide such service? What is the cost? If you know of a place that provides this service, could you give me that info.
Thank you for your attention.
11500 Jewel Cave Rd SE
Albuquerque, NM 87123
505 292 5419
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