Every spring sheep are sheered then the wool is brought to Belle Vallee Wools

1.    Sorting:  The wool is sorted first by cleanliness of individual fleeces than all the dirty parts of the cleanest fleeces are taken off.  The cleaner the fleece the cleaner the final product.   The wool at this stage will also be sorted out by crimp (quality of the fleece) and colour (black or white).

2.    Washing:  The wool is washed first in cold water then in hot water.  In the hot water stage the wool will by dyed if we need different colours for the blankets for example.  If the wool is dyed or still dirty it will be washed a third time to make sure the color doesn’t run or to make sure it is cleaned respectively.

3.    Dying:  The wool is then dried in our dryer.   First of all takes out all the moisture out of the wool to pre-shrink it!

4.    Picking:   The machine  dates from 1914 pulls the fleece apart with teeth on the big metal drum in the picker.  As the wool is being pushed though the picker the teeth pull the wool apart and blow it into a holding room.  

5.    Carding: the Carding machine is from 1916 and its goal is to get all the wool running in one continuous parallel fiber.  The wool goes around each of the 18 worker rolls once.  At the end of the carding machine the continuous fiber is separated out on Jack Spools into roving

6.    Spinning: The spinning frame is from 1968 and takes the Jack Spools of Roving and spins each individual roving thread onto tubes as yarn.  This spinning strengthens the wool and causes it to become one-ply

7.    Twisting: takes two spools of one ply and combines them together to make two-ply.  At this machine we can combine different colors and make three-ply and four-ply even though two ply is most commonly made.

8.    Warping Frame: There are 712 tubes that need to set up in the correct order to make the warp which is the length of a blanket.   Once all tubes are set up they are pulled though the feed box and then tied around a metal beam which rotates slowly to keep the threads all the same tension and length.

9.    Weaving: is done on the 1983 rapier loom.  A punch card tells the loom which color to run across the machine.  Therefore every thread is done individually and after many, many threads a blanket is created.

10.    Finishing: The blanket is cut off to size then it is serged around the edges, it is then gone over by hand to remove any knots, and take out pieces of hay and straw.  The blankets are then washed and dried .  They are gone over by hand again to take out more pieces of straw and hay.   Last but not least the Belle Vallee Wools label is sewn on and then they are sold
As Belle Vallee Wools says that is all there is to it.