Shepherd’s Wool Yarn – A Review

I came across Shepherd’s Wool Yarn in a LYS about a month ago and I’ve been planning to give it a blog post ever since. Yep, its taken me a month to snap the pictures and get my thoughts down on paper pixels. What can I say, things pile up on me.  One day I will be able to blather on about yarn all day in blog posts and the blog-o-sphere will pay me vast sums of money to do so. Not today though. Probably not tomorrow either.

No one is paying me off for this review, btw. In fact, I had to pay the LYS to get the yarn, lol. But when I found it tucked into a bottom shelf I felt like I had made a real score. Tracking where it came from and how it was made felt a bit like an adventure. This is a blog about crafting adventures so I’m inspired to write my first-ever product review.

I found Shepard’s Wool at The Tinsmith’s Wife while on the 2014 Hill Country Yarn Crawl. It was (as I mentioned) on a bottom shelf and easy to miss. In fact if it wasn’t such a riot of color, I never would have seen it.

This is Stonehedge Crazy and its made by the Stonehedge Fiber Mill in East Jordan Michigan.  No two skeins on that shelf were the same. The staff at Tinsmith’s Wife told me the yarn was made from the mill ends of their main line, Shepard’s Wool, and if I would just look up from where I was sitting (which was on the floor with every skein of Stonehedge Crazy pulled out and piled up around me…) I would see their main line of solid colors.

You want a closer look at the Crazy, right?

Its two ply in worsted weight (about 2.5 ounces each), and the colors are combined at random. Each skein is one of a kind. I love it. I picked out these two Crazy skeins and a black from their main line (which is a full 4 ounces) to go with them. The other ladies on the yarn crawl with me fell in love with it too. I think we all bought some.

No, I have no idea what I’m going to make. Yes, its been a month. I haven’t found a pattern that would do it justice I guess. (I’m open to suggestions!) So far all it does is live in my work basket. I take it out every few days and pet it. That’s it current purpose, to be petted because this yarn is soooooooft.  For a plied, 100% merino, no special stuff blended in, its surprisingly soft.

On a final note…. besides being a party of color, and super soft, this yarn is made at a small, independently owned mill. I didn’t know that until I got it home and did a little googling of course. But now that I know it came from fiber processing mill which grew out of a 157 year old farm, I feel like I’ve discovered a real gem. Locally owned, independent fiber mills are hard to come by these days.  So I decided to share what I found, share what I love, and maybe push a little business their way.

Tell me what you think! Do you love it too? And any pattern suggestions (I have about 600 total yards in worsted weight) would be appreciated.