Sheep on the Lam by Max Grover courtesy of the Max Grover Gallery, Port Townsend, WA
Here on the Olympic Peninsula, sheep are part of the lambscapes, as Grandma Moses used to call them. The authenticity movement has given rise to wool producers, spinners, felters, weavers and fiber artists of all kinds….and many roads along this fiber highway lead straight to the 6-foot OnRamp that feeds fleece into Barry Taylor’s giant Cottage Carding machine.
Barry and his wife Linda bought the machine after seeing an ad in the paper. Since then, their Border Leicesters have become more than a flock of high-maintenance lawnmowers.
For the last six years, they’ve built their business Taylored Fibers, providing custom carding services and carded fibers from their home in Tarboo Bay, outside of Quilcene.
Visitors to the farm are shepherded in by Tig, an Australian Sheepdog whose flock includes two humans, a cat, four sheep, a horse and a guard Llama named Zane Grey (who conveniently finds a mud puddle to roll in whenever shearing time comes around).
Sheep are shorn annually and a single sheep can produce up to 20 pounds of fleece, depending on the breed. That would be enough to knit 20 sweaters, if you didn’t mind walking around covered in twigs and mud and sheep felge.
Raw fleece must first be washed to remove its lanolin (wool grease). Then it’s fluffed through a picker (hopefully leaving all ten fingers intact) before being sent through the giant carding drums.
The process can cut its original weight in half. “Llama and Alpaca fleece has no lanolin, so the loss is considerably less – maybe only 15-20%”.
Barry should know. He grew up buying and selling wool in the textile mills of Yorkshire, England back in the days when “the canals would run red or green, depending on the dyes being used”
After a stint on an Australian sheep farm, he entered the corporate end of wool manufacturing. That took him from Sydney to Boston to the unlikely town of Tarboo Bay where he retired with his wife Linda – a proficient spinner and knitter.
Well….. you could hardly call it retirement. Between Linda’s flair for dyes and Barry’s feel for textures, they’re always experimenting, trying to find the perfect blend – at least until the next perfect blend comes along.
The carding shed – open to the public – is a visual and tactile Epcot Center for fiber enthusiasts. You can’t look at a bag of bamboo wool or Alpaca without wanting to run your fingers through its luxurious texture.
The fun doesn’t stop there. The Taylor home has all the amenities of fiberphiles – 3 spinning wheels, some kelp-like wool garlands hanging to dry from the candalabra, two screen doors in the living room, piled high with emerald green fleece….You’re welcome for tea, if you can find a place that isn’t being used to dry, spin, hang, store, or knit something that once grew on a cloven hooved animal. This isn’t their hobby, it’s their life.
The Taylor’s flock of followers began with the next door neighbor’s sheep and spread to the fiberous faithful of artists and shepherds throughout the Olympic Peninsula.
Fiber artist Amelia Garripoli of Ask the Bellwether blogged, “Barry Taylor’s done a great job on a variety of medium wools for me, Romney cross, Jacob, Ryeland, and Dorset.”.
About half of the business is creating carded fibers from the Taylor’s fleece, blended with the fibers Barry buys, including flax, silk, and Angora.
The other half is providing carding services for customers, who bring in raw material from sheep, Llama, Alpaca, even the family’s Lhasa Apso. “We take a very personal approach”. – hence the name Taylored Fibers.
We at Port Hadlock Yarns feel so lucky to live in a place where the raw materials are as abundant as the talent and creativity of the local fiber community. We look forward to learning all we can about them and sharing their knowledge with you on our Fiber Flock page.
Meanwhile, we’ve started stocking “bumps” of wound roving from Taylored Fibers in a variety luxurious colors. These fibers are one of a kind and can be used for spinning, weaving or felting.
Come in for a chance to feel the real deal…and imagine the possibilities.
FROM SEATTLE Turn R onto Chimacum Rd .... FROM PORT TOWNSEND Turn L onto Irondale Rd 
