The Fibre Of The Gods

What were we to do with the wonderful fibre The Lavender Hill Mob was producing?

We found it wasn’t worth us sending it away to be sold and we had way too much fleece to hand spin it ourselves. So Michael found the Belfast Mini Mills website and it was there that our new venture started.

They shipped 13 machines over to Australia from Canada in 2007. The machines were all carefully placed in our shed with the help of Alan and Josh. Then George wired the shed up for us and we were ready to go.

Jeff came out from Canada and stayed with us for a few weeks, setting the machines into place and showing us how to use them, and then it was up to us. Michael as the head technician and Hazel as his T.A. to keep them all working, making yarn and felt for ourselves and other alpaca breeders.

It’s been a huge learning curve and we have learnt more about the nature of this wonderful fibre since having the mill than we learnt from showing fleeces for the previous 8 years.

Every day brings new challenges, but we are glad to say we now have enough knowledge and experience to tackle most of them without the assistance of the experts in Canada. We not only process alpaca fleece, but have also made yarn out of camel, cashmere and mohair.

Thanks Jeff and the rest of the gang at Belfast Mini Mills Canada