Journey to Wooly Knob
Yesterday (Friday 6/27/08) I took a whole bunch of wool to Wooly Knob Fiber Mill . Wooly Knob is located in La Otto, IN which is a tiny town just north of Ft. Wayne. However, LaOtto does have a flashing red (stop) light in town, so compared to Afton, WI, IMO it is practically urban. 
It took me 6 hours to drive there, which was one hour longer than it should have, due to road construction and an accident on I-94 near the Illinois/Indiana State line. I spent about an hour there, resting and talking to Matt and Jamie. Then drove back home, which took 5 hours. Since it was night by then, I took the Chicago Skyway (I80/90), which goes through downtown. There is very little traffic downtown in the evening and the Skyway had less construction than I-94. I had taken along an overnight bag with a few necessities just in case I was too exhausted to drive all the way home. But once I had divested myself of all that raw wool, and had a nice chat with Matt and Jamie, I immediately felt energetic and care-free. So I had plenty of energy and made it all the way back home.
Matt and Jamie are really cool guys and as interesting to talk in person as they are on the phone. We talked about wool, sheep, farm stuff, specimen planting of souvenir trees and colonial Williamsburg (my favorite childhood vacation, which they had seen recently). I wished that I had longer to visit, but they needed to go home for the evening and I needed to hit the road again.
The wool that I took was all my wool from the 2006/2007 season and my "scraps" from 2007/2008, which includes neck wool and fleeces that are good wool, but not deemed to be pretty enough to be a hand-spinning fleece. It turned out to be 169 pounds of wool! That is why I drove it there rather than mailing it as I usually do.
Matt and Jamie describe the building as a "ramshackle old gas station" and that is a pretty true description. It is made of stone blocks (like old style cinder blocks) and packed full of stuff to wash and card wool. I was a bit worried that once I brought all my wool in, they might never be able to get out of the building! They have a couple of trailers outside that they use just for storage of wool waiting to be processed. They said that when they first got the building, it was really in bad shape and then they started to clean and paint, but ended up getting so busy doing fiber processing, that they never finished the job.
What is amazing is the magic that they do with fiber with their simple but functional set-up. There were several bags of beautiful grey roving sitting near the carding machine that must have been processed that day. It looked so nice, I just wanted to open the bags and touch it!!
In their building, there is a large skirting table and behind that a bunch of wash tub type sinks that they use for soaking the wool. Across from the sinks are some old washing machines that they use to spin out the water. So the dirty wool gets divided between the sinks to soak in very hot water and an organic type laundry soap. Then they put the wool in the old washing machines to spin out the dirty water and then they go back in the sinks to sit in clean water. Because there are so many tubs, they just sort of go around in a circle, so there is really no wasted time while the wool is soaking, because it sits in the water/detergent while "waiting its turn" to have the water spun out.
Then the wet fleeces go onto a drying rack that is quite ingenious. It was built by the father of one of the guys who is a carpenter. (I think Matt's dad, but I can't swear to it.) They look just like skirting tables, but they are attached to a rope in each corner. When the rope is slack, the skirting tables (about 6 of them) stack one on top of the other. This is so you can load up even the top one without teetering on top of a ladder carrying a heavy wet fleece. Then when you pull a rope that goes over a pulley (the pulley wheel was also made of wood, which I found fascinating), and the skirting tables start to be pulled up on their ropes toward the ceiling. So as the one above is lifted off, you can put wet wool on the second table etc. When the rope is pulled tight, the top rack is just a couple feet from the ceiling and the others are spaced so that the lowest one is just a few feet off the floor. Matt said that everyone who sees it, says they should patent the design, but they have no intention of producing them commercially and it isn't like every household needs one.
Once the wool is dry it goes into their carding machine which looks just like a really big drum carder. For those unfamiliar with drum carders, the fiber is aligned using teeth on a fabric belt. The teeth look like the world's largest dog slicker brush. (Notice the big belt down inside the metal box in the center of the photo.) Then after it is carded, the machine somehow magically spits it out as roving. See the roving coming out of the top, right of the photo below. When I got there it was late afternoon at about closing time, so the machine wasn't running. Maybe if I go again some other year, I will get to see it in action.
Unfortunately, it was really hard to get a good photo because the place is small and it was hard to get far enough away from the machine to get the whole thing in a picture. But I did my best with the above.
I am hoping to get my roving back in August, so I should have enough for internet sales and am debating whether or not to try to get my own booth in September at WI Sheep and Wool. They are going to make some really nice stuff for me -- some blended, some striped and maybe some blended with silk. I can't wait to see it. These guys really do magic!!
It took me 6 hours to drive there, which was one hour longer than it should have, due to road construction and an accident on I-94 near the Illinois/Indiana State line. I spent about an hour there, resting and talking to Matt and Jamie. Then drove back home, which took 5 hours. Since it was night by then, I took the Chicago Skyway (I80/90), which goes through downtown. There is very little traffic downtown in the evening and the Skyway had less construction than I-94. I had taken along an overnight bag with a few necessities just in case I was too exhausted to drive all the way home. But once I had divested myself of all that raw wool, and had a nice chat with Matt and Jamie, I immediately felt energetic and care-free. So I had plenty of energy and made it all the way back home.Matt and Jamie are really cool guys and as interesting to talk in person as they are on the phone. We talked about wool, sheep, farm stuff, specimen planting of souvenir trees and colonial Williamsburg (my favorite childhood vacation, which they had seen recently). I wished that I had longer to visit, but they needed to go home for the evening and I needed to hit the road again.
The wool that I took was all my wool from the 2006/2007 season and my "scraps" from 2007/2008, which includes neck wool and fleeces that are good wool, but not deemed to be pretty enough to be a hand-spinning fleece. It turned out to be 169 pounds of wool! That is why I drove it there rather than mailing it as I usually do.
Matt and Jamie describe the building as a "ramshackle old gas station" and that is a pretty true description. It is made of stone blocks (like old style cinder blocks) and packed full of stuff to wash and card wool. I was a bit worried that once I brought all my wool in, they might never be able to get out of the building! They have a couple of trailers outside that they use just for storage of wool waiting to be processed. They said that when they first got the building, it was really in bad shape and then they started to clean and paint, but ended up getting so busy doing fiber processing, that they never finished the job.
What is amazing is the magic that they do with fiber with their simple but functional set-up. There were several bags of beautiful grey roving sitting near the carding machine that must have been processed that day. It looked so nice, I just wanted to open the bags and touch it!!
In their building, there is a large skirting table and behind that a bunch of wash tub type sinks that they use for soaking the wool. Across from the sinks are some old washing machines that they use to spin out the water. So the dirty wool gets divided between the sinks to soak in very hot water and an organic type laundry soap. Then they put the wool in the old washing machines to spin out the dirty water and then they go back in the sinks to sit in clean water. Because there are so many tubs, they just sort of go around in a circle, so there is really no wasted time while the wool is soaking, because it sits in the water/detergent while "waiting its turn" to have the water spun out.
Then the wet fleeces go onto a drying rack that is quite ingenious. It was built by the father of one of the guys who is a carpenter. (I think Matt's dad, but I can't swear to it.) They look just like skirting tables, but they are attached to a rope in each corner. When the rope is slack, the skirting tables (about 6 of them) stack one on top of the other. This is so you can load up even the top one without teetering on top of a ladder carrying a heavy wet fleece. Then when you pull a rope that goes over a pulley (the pulley wheel was also made of wood, which I found fascinating), and the skirting tables start to be pulled up on their ropes toward the ceiling. So as the one above is lifted off, you can put wet wool on the second table etc. When the rope is pulled tight, the top rack is just a couple feet from the ceiling and the others are spaced so that the lowest one is just a few feet off the floor. Matt said that everyone who sees it, says they should patent the design, but they have no intention of producing them commercially and it isn't like every household needs one.
Once the wool is dry it goes into their carding machine which looks just like a really big drum carder. For those unfamiliar with drum carders, the fiber is aligned using teeth on a fabric belt. The teeth look like the world's largest dog slicker brush. (Notice the big belt down inside the metal box in the center of the photo.) Then after it is carded, the machine somehow magically spits it out as roving. See the roving coming out of the top, right of the photo below. When I got there it was late afternoon at about closing time, so the machine wasn't running. Maybe if I go again some other year, I will get to see it in action.
Unfortunately, it was really hard to get a good photo because the place is small and it was hard to get far enough away from the machine to get the whole thing in a picture. But I did my best with the above.
I am hoping to get my roving back in August, so I should have enough for internet sales and am debating whether or not to try to get my own booth in September at WI Sheep and Wool. They are going to make some really nice stuff for me -- some blended, some striped and maybe some blended with silk. I can't wait to see it. These guys really do magic!!
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