A Trip to Slaithwaite...

This past Friday I was lucky enough to visit the beautiful village of Slaithwaite (or "Slawit" as it's known to the locals) for a fabulous day of exploring the processes behind some of their local textile production. It was AMAZING - a whole day of talking about yarn and fabric? Yes please!
I was one of two students who decided to attend the trip... all I can say is that those who didn't go missed out on a treat!

Our first stop of the day was to a spinning mill...

On our way up to Slaithwaite I had had a discussion with my professor about how yarn gets from a sheep to being usable yarn - I mentioned about how it gets shorn off the sheep, sorted by quality, washed, and then carded before being spun into yarn. Sure enough, when we got to the factory, the owner described the very same process - I was quite pleased that I definitely had my facts straight! :-)
Their work begins after the carding process... and with these large balls of roving! (Apologies for the bad quality photos... I only had my phone with me on the day...)

There were containers FULL of balls like this - all I could think is all the yarn that could be made from it!
There were all sorts of interesting machines... like this one that takes all the "neps" or impurities out of the roving...

And spinning machines all working simultaneously to create the plies later to be twisted into yarn...

I had been told that all the yarn made there was for weaving into fabric... but the best part of seeing the factory was seeing this on the front of the building as we walked in...

It was the STYLECRAFT factory! I have some of their yarn in my stash, so I was so excited to see how my yarn came into being, and knowing that this is where it came from!
This was exciting enough, but we still had a few stops to visit... I'll share my experiences of them in some upcoming posts :-)