Wanted to write a quick post to let you know that we've cut our turn around time down to 7 weeks and it's shrinking! We now employee two other people at the mill - Patrick Leitch (carding and opening) and David Artrip (shipping, receiving and wash). These two new people have helped tremendously in cutting our turn around time down from 16 weeks out just 2 months ago.
2011 is being declared "Year of the Icelandic Fleece" by MSF. After working with this amazing fiber for the last 4 years we're now ready to drop our prices and ramp up our production speeds. We would like to begin processing 200 pounds of raw Icelandic fleece each week during the months of December through March.
Icelandic sheep are a primitive breed that have a dual coated fleece. The outer coat is called Tog and is a 30 micron fiber that is 6-9 inches long. The under coat is called Thel and is a 18-24 micron fiber that is 2-3 inches long and very crimpy. Icelandic fleeces are great for felting and thel yarns are amazingly soft. Lamb fleeces make an incredibly soft yarn even without being dehaired as their first fleece is almost identical between the thel and the tog.
Historically the Icelandic breed has been known for their ability to make an amazingly soft Lopi yarn. Lopi is a super bulky yarn - lightly twisted single that is 300 yards per pound. This yarn is great for quick knitting & felt projects and for
sweaters, hats or mittens.
Also in the last 12 months we have been exploring the production of rugs in a number of different patterns. We'll upload examples of the types of rugs we have made here soon. The cost to weave rugs is $.75/linear inch.
Hope you're having a great start to the winter. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and we hope that you have a very merry Christmas.
Sincerely,
Your friends at MSF
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