Donegal Yarns...the tour

Donegal Yarns is located next door to Studio. They produce much of the yarn used for hand-weaving the blankets and cloth produced here. They also supply a variety of designers and commercial enterprises. They make lovely hand knitting yarn in the Donegal style (more about what that means in a moment) and recently have begun introducing luxury fibers (cashmere, angora, mohair, etc.) into their traditional wool blends. This means you get that lovely rustic look in a sweater that is super soft. Smart. That kind of reinterpretation of tradition makes a lot of sense to me. The other day Chris, the General Manager, was gracious enough to give me a tour.

What makes a Donegal a Donegal and not some other kind of a thing, heathered for example? It's all about the color...and the flecks. First, the base color of the yarn is blended using several colors of fleece. Small amounts are weighed carded together to create a recipe that can be reproduced on a larger scale.


Look at those colors! Amazing! After the base mixture is achieved smaller bits of contrasting color are added to create the highlights, those little surprising bursts of color that give the yarn its character. Nora, who creates the shades for Donegal Yarns, has been doing this for over twenty years. She says greens are the hardest. I wouldn't have guessed that. Then again, there is A LOT of green here. I suppose it would be easy to be just a little off. Perhaps it is equally challenging to mix rust and brown in Arizona.

Once the recipe is achieved it is weighed out in mountains of dyed fleece. The wool starts out looking like this.



Those are giant bales of dyed wool. It is blended together with the correct fiber content (there are many types of wool with different degrees of softness and texture) and also in the correct proportions necessary to achieve the color. The fibers are air-mixed in small rooms (and then again by machine). It is a surreal experience to look in and see bits of colorful fleece falling from the ceiling. I tried to photograph this, but no image could do this process justice.

DY has an in-house dye works. That's how they achieve all their unique vibrant colors. They don't routinely color their employees though...I couldn't resist the shot. This gentleman had been removing some brilliant purple fleece from the dye pot which is so large he had to climb inside it.



Once blended the wool is then carded and spun. This is done on colossal machines which take up much of the factory floor. They seemed gigantic to me anyway. Then Chris informed me that DY is a small boutique operation. Other operations producing other types of yarn would be much larger.



Here the yarn is being twisted and put on to cones. It's dizzying to watch them work.

Donegal Yarns has existed in one form or another in this area for over one hundred years and grew out of the local hand-spinning tradition. They are perhaps the last commercial spinnery remaining in Ireland. There are other spinneries but these differ in that they produce primarily for their in-house needs and not for the broader market.

I feel quite fortunate to have this gem in my back yard!