solution

a bit delayed - but here comes the solution to the riddle of my last post. yes, those weird things are yarn cones - lots of them....

our group, the Connacht Textile Crafters, did a trip 2 weeks ago, up north to Donegal. the famous Donegal Tweed yarn is produced here:

unfortunately I didn't take pictures outside the factory, but you can find more details on their homepage, www.donegalyarns.com.

 of course you need fibres to make yarn - lots of it. some come in huge, white bales - others are already dyed, in single colours....

 to end up in blends like this. lots of little nups and locks that make up the tweedy yarn Donegal tweed is famous for.

they dye the stuff, too - in slightly larger batches than mine:) the fibres are pressed into large "kettles", and apparently dyed under pressure (like a pressure cooker really). no stirring involved...

this is the stage before the carding - where the fibres are pre-mixed. the metal "bin" on top blows air in, so that the small, loose fibres mix...

...before they end on a huge drum carder. unlike on my household sized drum carder you don't have to pull out your batt and start again to blend it more.

instead the batt moves from roller to roller to form a large, continuous batt ...

... like this. I wish I had a few metres of this! not necessarily in orange though.....

eventually the batt is pre-drafted into finer pencil rovings, which are wound on large beams like this. at this stage they look like lots of flat balls, sitting side by side on the beam.works in purple, too!

which is moved to the spinning machine. each roving is fed into the spinners ...

.. and ends up as yarn on those large cones.

or those - couldn't resist them because they are purple! I could knit so many purple sweaters out of this load....

the yarn isn't finished yet, it contains oils and has to be washed before winding it on cones again. this lady here can double-tie one whole skein faster than I can tie skeins in one spot on my niddynoddy... but she has about 30 years of practice:) for some reason I didn't take a picture of the washing area.... but the yarn runs automatically through different large tanks, where it is washed and rinsed - and of course dried again.

eventually the yarn ends up on those 2 kg cones for sale. I found the whole tour around the mill very interesting - our handspinning, really. just on a very large scale! this is a factory, a wholesale company, no shop with shelves full of wool to buy....

 

for some reason blogger doesn't want me to show you the rest of the pix:( off to another entry....