We love making products with local island wool. We’ve shared a few stories about the start of the process – shearing the sheep – and lots about the weaving side of things. So we thought it’s time to shine a light on what happens in the middle: getting from Skye fleece to Skye Wool yarn. […] The post Skye Wool: Fleece to Yarn appeared first on Skye Weavers - Tweed, scarves, throws and clothing woven by pedal-power on the Isle of Skye ..read more

This month’s blog takes a look at a traditional tweed process that is an important part of Scotland’s cultural heritage: waulking. Waulking demonstration by Sgioba Luaidh Inbhirchluaidh (Inverclyde Waulking Group) Waulking (in Gaelic luadh) is an age-old method of hand-finishing newly woven tweed to thicken and soften it. In the Highlands & Islands this work was traditionally done by groups of women, working around a communal table or other flat surface while singing rhythmic ‘waulking songs’ (òrain luaidh). This activity survived in parts of the Hebrides – including in the Minginish penin ..read more

“But what do you do in winter?!” That’s a question we often get asked by our visitors during the summer months. And the middle of January seems a good time to try and answer it! Skye sheep know a thing or two about keeping warm Winter can be challenging here as anywhere, but there are plenty of compensations. It’s actually Roger’s favourite season – he was definitely designed for northern climes. Being surrounded by sea we don’t get as much snow as the Scottish mainland but things do generally ice up for a week or two each year. This can be a bit tricky when it comes to manoeuvring up and down ..read more

Tartan patterns are often about telling the story of a place. And more often than not it’s topographical features that inspire the designs. So here is our visual story of where we live: the Glendale Tartan. We’ve been wanting to design a local tartan for a while. We finally started working on the design this spring and it’s been very exciting to see it come to life in its woven form. We’ve used the pattern to weave scarves in two colourways to begin with: Glendale Summer and Glendale Winter. But I’m sure the pattern will re-emerge in other variations and products before too long. Glendale Tar ..read more

We love an excuse to talk about the fantastic qualities of wool. (And share a picture of our favourite sheep of course.) And what better time than October, which is officially Wool Month ..read more

Tartan is big news this year. A major exhibition at V&A Dundee has put tartan in the media spotlight and we recently went to check it out. Highly recommended! Tartan exhibition at the V&A All this tartan talk has also inspired us to revisit some of our own patterns of the past, and dream up some new ones as well. More on that later … but first, what is tartan exactly? At its most basic, tartan is a checked pattern made up of at least two contrasting colours. In weaving terms it’s normally woven in a 2/2 twill structure, with the alternating colours of warp and weft creating a grid ..read more

Our island environment provides much of the inspiration for our weaves. Often it’s the details (particularly lichens!) that get the creative juices flowing. But our latest designs are inspired by Skye at a somewhat larger scale. Neist Point Scarf on the rocksNeist Point Scarves Our local beauty spot, Neist Point, provided the inspiration for this new range of scarves. The dramatic headland here is made up of distinctive Dolerite rocks, with vertical columns criss-crossed with horizontal fissures. We love the graphic lines of these rocks and thought they would translate rather well to a geometr ..read more

We’ve been talking about putting together a fabric archive for quite a while. OK, ten years! So this winter we finally sorted through our miscellaneous collection of swatches and put them in a couple of books. Leafing through them all was a bit like looking through old photographs, with the added dimension of touch and texture. Revisiting old friends – leafing through our archive books We got a few new ideas from looking through our woolly past. We’ve also been reminiscing about the many stories behind our weaves. They might be linked to the landscape, or something personal, or somet ..read more

It’s hard to believe it’s ten years since we first set up our pedal powered loom on Skye. We may not be quite as fresh-faced as we were then, but looking through old photos we’re amazed at how much has happened over the past decade. There have been lots of infrastructure and weaving developments of course, but what’s been most important has been the people we’ve worked with and the connections we’ve made through our weaving. We feel so lucky to be doing what we do, and to be part of a supportive community of neighbours, colleagues, suppliers – and of course customers. It’s impossible to summa ..read more

All our Skye Wool has a story behind it – and if you come to Glendale you’ll see much of next year’s fleece grazing in the glen. But this story is a bit special. It’s the tale of the amazing Maisie, who survived and thrived against the odds after she was fostered by our colleague Angie. Maisie came into Angie’s life in March last year when she was just one day old. She’d been found by a walker on the edge of Loch Mhòr near Neist Point, and her mum was nowhere to be seen. The flock belongs to local farmer Sam, who didn’t think she would survive – one of her ears was flopping down, which is a s ..read more