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New Arrivals
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Natural Dyed Yarn - Sport Weight
Natural Dyed Yarn - Lace Weight
Undyed Pin-Drafted Roving
Undyed Yarn - Lace and Sport Weight
Pioneer Collection Yarns
Each skein of yarn has gone through so many processes to get to your hands, ready to be made into a project. This collection specifically has been dyed using only natural materials which you can learn more about below.
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Every year, most domesticated breeds of sheep grow a fleece that will not naturally shed out in the spring. This creates the need for shearing.
On Ewe Know It Farms, shearing is done by Lynn and Jared in the months of March - May. Lynn went to shearing school to learn this complex skill and Jared helps out as the muscle, wrangling the sheep, and as a safety precaution, keeping an eye on the blades for emergency shut off when things get hairy.
The sheep are not coated, nor are they washed prior to shearing, which is a little better and less stressful for the animal, but does create a lot of work in the next steps. Fleeces come off the sheep DIRTY and before they can be bagged up and sent to the mill, Lynn and Jared pick through to remove the worst bits that will probably never come clean no matter how much they are washed.
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To just describe this step as “Milling” is a huge oversimplification of what really goes on here.
Dirty fleeces are sent in bags to the fiber mill and the first step is “Skirting”. Lynn and Jared have already pulled out the worst of the worst, but the mill professionals pull out things like second cuts and anything that will compromise the quality of the yarn.
Next is a washing or '“Scouring” stage where the fleeces are loaded into a big vat of warm/hot water with gentle detergent to remove dirt and breakdown the greasy lanolin.
Then there are the fiber preparation stages that have many names and subtle differences but generally just prepare the fiber for spinning. After the washing process, the fiber is usually in clumps or locs that need to be broken up by some method of combing. The last part of this step before spinning creates what is called “Pin-Drafted Roving”. This narrow, continuous strip of fluffy fiber is ready to be spun either by the machines at the mill or by home spinners on their wheels.
The last part of milling is “Spinning” and “Skeining”. Spinning is what creates the actual 2 or 3-ply yarn and skeining is measuring the yarn into equal lengths and twisting it up on itself to prevent a tangled mess! If you have gone to a local yarn shop and seen the yarn displayed in beautiful loose twists, that is a skein! Yarn from craft stores is often processed into a ball instead of a skein, but it is the same idea, just a way to keep the yarn organized and ready to use.
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This collection of yarn is near and dear to my heart. This is the very first yarn I ever got milled and the fiber came from the first ewe lambs ever born on my farm.
In an effort to honor this material as much as I can, I decided to only use natural dyes in this collection. I call it the pioneer collection not only because it is the first collection I have ever put out, but also because it uses tecniques that have existed long before the introduction of fast, predictable chemical dyes. A pioneer in any situation doesn’t know what exactly they are getting themselves into, and that is much the same with natural dyes.
Though I tried my hardest to take notes, I know that any color I achieved when dyeing this yarn is essentially irreplicable, and that is part of what makes this collection so special.
What plants were used to achieve these colors?
I wanted to focus on vibrance and uniqueness for each different color. I chose plants like madder root of red, cutch for orange, marigold for yellow, indigo (shocker, I know) for blue, logwood for purple, and walnut for brown. Through combinations of these colors, overdying in some scenarios, careful dip dying in others, I was able to achieve a wide variety of cohesive colors for this collection that I truly love.
How did I decide which colors/techniques to use?
Overall, with the experience I have had in knitting and crafting with yarn as well as the experience and stories I have absorbed from my fiber friends, I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking to achieve before I started dyeing. I knew I wanted a good range of colors, because what I like is not what everyone likes. I also wanted to attempt something more interesting than just a solid color and the ultimate masterpiece would be SPECKLES. Gotta love speckles. But they are incredibly hard to achieve with the way that natural dyeing works, so I had to keep my expectations reined in as well.
How did I learn to natural dye?
I credit not only my interest but actually all of my prior experience in dyeing of any sort to the Lorain County Spinners and Weavers Guild which I am a member of. When I first got into sheep and spinning I quickly stumbled across them and have made every effort I can to attend meetings, demonstration, and get involved in special interest groups that I can. One of these special interest groups over 2024 and 2025 was specifically about natural dyes. I am grateful to the incredible members of the guild for sharing their knowledge and experience with me and so many others through our “dye days”. Having now done the dye process entirely on my own, I know what a great gift it was to be able to attend those days and share the labor of prep work, research, clean up, etc. Without those ladies, there is no way I would have attempted this project.
Undyed Pin-Drafted Roving
Rooted in earthy tones and natural texture, this vase draws the eye with its layered surface and sculptural presence. Its generous shape makes it ideal for statement arrangements—or as a work of art all its own.
