2 days ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Is this Victorian relic the answer to Scotland's frayed yarn story?
But having been stored for years - a restoration project that happened - to some, the old S. Walker & Sons carding machine was little more than scrap metal or at best, a museum piece.
Black cheviot fleece is loaded into the Victorian carding machine (Image: Highland Wool)
Now though, having finally been torn apart and rebuilt, missing parts replaced with modern equivalents and driven by a couple's dogged determination to rebuild what was lost, it has become a symbol of hope for Scottish yarn.
Named 'Caroline', the carding machine now sits proudly in an old barn on Donna and Donald Gillies' farm at Argay in Sutherland, alongside a second-hand Belfast picker – a machine that untangles knots from fleece and prepares it for the carding process.
Together with huge washing tubs – stage one is cleaning the muck and vegetation off the fleeces - the machines are the beating heart of a plan by the two 'accidental' farmers to give small-scale shepherds like them somewhere on Scottish soil to process their fleece.
In the past few weeks, 'Caroline' reached a major milestone when, with the machine's wheels turning once again and test runs complete, Highland Wool mill finally opened for business.
Although still operating at a reduced capacity while the mill finds its feet, if all goes to plan before long Caroline should be thundering through eight times the amount of fleece it's currently handling.
The mill is helping to fill a gap that's been growing since the Industrial Revolution swept away Scotland's cottage industry of wool production in favour of big machines and bigger mills – mostly in northern England.
Centralisation meant mainland Scotland fell into the habit of sending its wool south.
Donna Gilllies of Highland Wool with her Hebridean sheep (Image: Highland Wool)
And with fewer mills and longer distances to travel, the farmers' costs soared, waiting lists for wool processing grew and some simply gave up.
The issue has been heightened in recent years as demand for quality Scottish-produced yarn has soared at the same time as farmers, faced with receiving just pennies per fleece, were finding it more economical to burn or give them away rather than face storage and transportation costs.
It became an even bigger problem when the decision was taken last year to halt the wool production process at New Lanark's working mill, which for decades had accepted washed fleeces from small producers and prepared it for spinning.
None of which was really in the thoughts of Donna, originally from California, or husband Donald when they took on the challenge of reviving his parents' long since overgrown Sutherland farm.
Having inherited the land, they were faced with a patchwork of bog, woodland and arable fields unfarmed for around 30 years.
Despite having had little enthusiasm to be a farmer in his youth, Donald and Donna embraced the idea of creating a traditional farm that avoided chemical fertilisers and pesticides, where they could raise Hebridean sheep, Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs, Scots Dumpy chickens, heritage apple orchards and bees.
Black cheviot fleece is fed through the restored carding machine at Highland Wools (Image: Highland Wool)
But while the hardy Hebridean sheep produced distinctive and high quality double coated fleece, Donna was frustrated by the difficult route required to have it processed.
'Our Hebridean sheep help us manage the land,' she says. 'But having a small flock costs more per animal to sheer.
'We then found out how few consignment mills there are in Scotland – just one of the two mainland mills here could take our fleece.'
The couple would have to transport their fleece to the south of England to be processed. But, because they can only produce a relatively small amount each year, they would have to wait around two years to have enough to send.
And by then, its quality would have started to deteriorate.
The lack of mills to support Scotland's plentiful sheep farmers - particularly those specialising in supporting heritage breeds - confused Donna, who had thought of the country as being a home for quality yarn.
'I started talking to other people and found they had the same issues as we did.
'I was shocked when I looked at the history of how it got to this point," she adds. "It gets my ire up that this is the state of things.
'We had this whole cottage industry, when farming families and neighbours made use of their wool, then the Industrial Revolution happened, machines got bigger, and it got centralised in northern England and not here.
'Mainland Scotland became used to harvesting wool and sending it south.
'When mills there began to close, we had nothing to replace it.
'For Scotland not to have its own mill infrastructure is really hard to believe.'
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With wool in plentiful supply but gaps in the route to processing it, Donna and Donald decided to take matters into their own hands.
'We started to look at how we could process it ourselves,' she says.
That sounds simpler than it was: neither had any experience of wool production, no equipment to do it and just the deep conviction that their plan would work.
First, though, they would need small machines just the right size to fit into their farm barn, and most of those were relics from a Victoria era.
Their search eventually led to Oban where they found 'Caroline the Carder'. A restoration project halted by illness, it had lain in a barn for 12 years until the couple found it two years ago.
Having brought it to Ardgay, they then set about using old manuals and Donald's know-how from working in construction and heavy plant machinery, to bring it back to life.
While he used old diagrams to make his own spare parts, Donna rolled up her sleeves, washing her Hebridean fleeces by hand in giant tubs, while swotting up on how to operate the 'new' old machines.
Donald Gillies, who inherited his parents' Sutherland farm, has restored the Victorian carding machine (Image: Highland Wool)
'None of us had used them before, but carded fleece has a lot of possibilities: spinners can spin, it can be used for felting, be twisted to be used in peg looms or for stuffing.
'It has taken us a year to learn how to work the picker and the carder, and we've also had to learn how to work with each breed's fleece.'
Far from a one size fits all process, different fleeces require different approaches.
'Even within Shetland one fleece might need a different treatment to another," she adds. "Hebridean sheep are double coated in lanolin, they have to be washed differently from a black nose or it would turn into something like cardboard.
'Some farmers might have multiple breeds in a flock. So it's taken a while to learn all of that.'
Enthusiasts from around the world visit Shetland Wool Week, due to be held in late September (Image: ALEXA FITZGIBBON - Shetland Amenity Trust)
It's also been a race against time: 'The challenge is that so much is vanishing," Donna adds. "We have a shortage of people who know how to work these big machines, but no dearth of spinners and crafters.
"Meanwhile, wool is on the up.
'The wool crafting industry in Scotland is full of people who spin and want to work with Scottish wool.
'Once at capacity we hope we can inspire others, that people will hear that this is really possible, that they'll come to see how it works and do it too."
It's a message Donna will take to the Scottish Yarn Festival in Perth later this month where she is set to give a talk about how the mill has grown from idea to reality.
Having ballooned from a small event of just a handful of exhibitors, the festival now attracts people from around 20 different countries, including some who travel from as far flung as Canada and Taiwan.
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It is just one of several similar festivals across the country that have also seen rising interest, among them Glasgow School of Yarn, held in October and Scotland's longest running event of its kind, Shetland Wool Week which attracts visitors from around the world, Tangled Galashiels, Woolly Good Gathering in Edinburgh, and Wool at Portsoy which takes place next week.
Interest in wool crafts and yarn is expected to rise even higher with a new 'Sewing Bee' style television programme, Game of Wool, fronted by celebrity knitter Tom Daley and featuring Scottish crafts experts Di Gilpin and Sheila Greenwell.
Scottish wool craft experts Sheila Greenwell (left) and Di Gilpin of Scottish Yarn Company and Handknitting Design Studio (Image: Contributed)
Director of the Scottish Yarn Festival, Eva Christie, says she has seen a rise in the number of small 'homegrown' producers who, instead of sending fleece from their sheep to be buried or burned, are now seeking mills to process it into yarn.
'There is demand from consumers who want to be able to trace their yarn right back to not just the farm but to the individual sheep,' she says.
'But trying to get a mill to process their fleece can mean they have to wait sometimes up to two years.
'People are looking for that connection to land and culture.'
The Scottish Yarn Festival is at Perth Concert Hall, August 30 and 31.
