Owners of That Darn Yarn Shop & Fibre Mill in Kamloops Geoff Loehr (left) and Nicole Link stand in front of a wool spinner.

(SHANNON AINSLIE / iNFOnews.ca)

Tucked into an industrial park on the outskirts of Kamloops is a small mill filling a big gap in a growing vintage market.

Stepping into the fiber mill at That Darn Yarn Shop & Fiber Mill is like stepping back in time, with spindles and wheels ticking and spinning on machinery that is decades old.

There are mounds of soft natural fibers so fluffy they beg to be touched, and a unique earthy smell.

“The fibers come from farmers, there’s nowhere really to ship your fleece,” said owner Nicole Link. “A lot gets shipped to Canadian Wool Growers in Alberta and Ontario and they ship a lot of that overseas.”

Link took iNFOnews.ca for a tour of the mill where natural fibers are cleaned and transformed into dyed yarn. It’s the only mill of its kind in the province, and every step of the process is done by hand.

“We go to the skirting table first where I prepare the fleece by removing vegetable matter, like straw or hay or burrs, and I take it out because you don’t want that in your final product,” Link said. “Then we take it outside and tumble it to get rid of dirt and vegetable matter.”

The fleece is then washed by hand and put in a washing machine to spin out the water.

“It takes like three washes to really scour the fleece then we put it out to dry, and after its dried we take it to the fiber opener.”

A pile of fluffy natural fleece will be turned into yarn at That Darn Yarn Shop & Fibre Mill in Kamloops.

(SHANNON AINSLIE / iNFOnews.ca)

The fleece goes through a machine called a picker to be pulled apart, creating a soft pile that looks like a cloud. That material is taken to a machine called a carder that aligns and stretches the fibers, and then sent through a set of combs or rollers called a pin drafter.

Link switched on a machine, where fluffed up fibers moved through a set of combs and came out looking like a two-inch-wide rope of cotton candy.

“We put it through these combs so the fibers are more aligned and when they’re aligned, they’re a lot less itchy,” Link said. “The fibers aren’t sticking out.”

Next, the fiber goes onto a large machine called a spinner where it is spun into single threads that are then plied into yarn.

It’s a long process, and it doesn’t end there. The yarn is then wrapped into skeins and hand dyed. Link spends six days per week transforming wool into dyed skeins of yarn.

Link and her husband Geoff Loehr started the fiber mill in 2016 after seeing a gap in the market for natural fibers. Link is a weaver and knitter and Loehr is a machinist.

“Nicole was teaching knitting classes and we could only buy synthetic yarn and she wanted natural yarn,” Loehr said. “We started looking around, there were a couple of mills in Alberta and one in BC that was shutting down.”

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Loehr searched the internet for spinning mills and found theirs in Minnesota.

They spent a week learning how to operate and maintain the mill before shipping the machines to Kamloops. Some of the machines are from the 1950s and 1970s.

“There used to be spinning factories all over North America and now they’re gone,” Link said. “Doing this supports our farmers, if we don’t support them, we’ll lose the industry.”

Owner at a fiber mill in Kamloops, Nicole Link winds yarn into skeins.

(SHANNON AINSLIE / iNFOnews.ca)

Link said there is a growing trend where consumers want natural products, along with a growing trend for people to return to traditional crafting and trades.

“People want to know where their clothing is coming from, who makes it, and how it’s made,” she said. “When you knit with acrylic and then you try knitting with wool or silk or alpaca, there’s a natural feel to it and you can feel good about what you made. Otherwise, the wool would be a waste product.”

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The shop takes in wool from BC, Saskatchewan, PEI, the Yukon and Washington State with many farmers and fiber artists purchasing the finished products.

The couple also gets regular visitors stopping by throughout the year.

“People from all over the world come to see our mill, we don’t mind showing them the craft,” Link said. 

Located at 2812 Bowers Place, the workshop has a small storefront for in-person purchases.

Go here to learn more and make online purchases.

That Darn Yarn Shop & Fibre Mill in Kamloops produces skeins of natural yarn.

(SHANNON AINSLIE / iNFOnews.ca)

This yarn was created and dyed at That Darn Yarn Shop & Fibre Mill in Kamloops.

(SHANNON AINSLIE / iNFOnews.ca)

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