Visitors to Scotland enjoy taking something authentic home as a souvenir and what evokes Scottish craftwork and tradition better than knitwear?

 

Here at Glenesk Folk Museum, one of our aims is to assist our local Craft Community and our Heritage Knitwear Project is a vehicle for just that. To make an economically viable product, we sought a niche market, with a discerning buyer profile and settled on the Scottish diaspora of Kilt wearers. Our first product is traditional kilt hose, inspired by antique patterns and examples in our collection.

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When it wasn't possible to buy locally produced wool for our venture, we set about finding a way to work with farmers with small flocks. To make this possible, our first challenge was to find a mill with an appetite for experimentation and able to process small volumes of mixed fleece within a reasonable time frame.

 

Stage two is to determine which types of fleece to blend to create a soft Scottish wool, strong enough to produce a durable product without resorting to adding man made fibres. Our experiments are well underway!

 

Our project has attracted a great deal of interest. An event, designed to involve stakeholders from all areas of the wool industry, in a conversation about understanding the barriers to bringing local wool to market, was covered by STV and even made the evening news.

 

Click the red box to see the video.