starcroft's nash island yarn

I tell this story every day, and never get tired of it...



Once upon a time (about 90 years ago), on an island in Downeast, Maine, a lighthouse keeper's daughter started a flock of sheep. When she passed away a few years ago, she put the flock and the island in the care of good friends of hers who lived nearby, knowing that they would be tended with the same love and care.


A few years after starting her spinning mill, my mom had met the lighthouse keeper's daughter and her sheep, and feel in love with the island and the 'fog-washed' fleeces the sheep produced. Every year since, she's joined the Wakemans (the care-taking friends) on trips out to the island to help with lambing, shearing and tending to the flock. This is the best part of our job - working with our close friends, the Wakemas, to keep a traditional farming practice alive. Each time we're out on the island, tromping through the hillucks after sheep, we're reminded why this is a special place, and a special way of life.

When shearing happens in early Summer, my mom sorts out each of the hundred or so fleeces into different grades, right as they come off the sheep. Sorting allows us to use all of the fiber to its best end. The Nash Island Sweater Yarn is made from some of the softest ewe fleeces, while our Nash Island Scarf Yarn is made from the lamb fleeces, with a little home-grown angora added in. The other fleeces are used for felt, rugs, or woven blankets.

To make the yarn, the fleeces are washed, opened, carded, drafted, and spun on our Mini-Mills machines at our home in Monroe, Maine. Each machine requires either my mom or my dad (who often helps out) to be standing by, feeding the fiber in and checking the quality, picking out errant bits of seaweed and such. Each year's "clip" (all the fleeces shorn that year) requires a few tweeks to the spinning & drafting process, to make sure that the skeins stay an even thickness & weight from year to year - no easy feat.

All the yarn, (as well as the roving and felt) is hand-dyed in small "kettle" batches, using big lobster pots and a special technique. Valuing simplicity and beauty, we created a method of dyeing our fibers to give them subtle variations in hue. That way, each skein, batch of roving, or felt piece ends up being different and unique. Each knits, spins, or felts up together into a careful blending of light and dark shades, in colorways which play off of the scenic and natural beauty we find on the island. It really is a most inspiring place. As you knit with Nash Island Yarn, we hope that you're inspired too.