The Sheep:
Any fleece to be produced by SheepFloof, is from a sheep that's alive and well. Roaming the fields. The sheep fleeces used come from the forever flock of Greenfields (Sheep Floofs wool home), Pont-y-Mwynwr and Pedigree breeding sheep from our neighbouring sheep owner.

All wool is processed by hand, from skirting, scouring and to carding. To then handcrafting the final product.

The sheep fleeces used currently are sheared from a mix of Pedigree Zwartbles and Pedigree Texel, Texel cross with Zwartlbes, Lleyn and Valais Blacknose.

They have daily care, around the clock, 365. Be that feed, water, pest control and human fusses. During the best of weather and the worst of weather. Day and night. Nothing comes before their welfare.

The Rug Process:

I produce my rugs by a process called "wet felting". It is a very labour intensive process. Involving wool, soap, water and lots of "rolling and movement". Felting has been around for thousands of years. Once essential for our survival. It's regarded as the earliest known textile across our history.

Commonly these days, when a owner/farmer has their sheep sheared, usually once pre summer, some breeds twice in a year. This is done purely for welfare reasons. To reduce the weight that the sheep are carrying and that they're cooler during hotter months and there's less chance of pests taking hold of the sheep. It costs the owner/farmer a lot more to get their animals sheared, than the pennies that they may receive from them. Lots unfortunately, just get simply set on fire.

The classic sheepskin rug is an outcome of 2 options: The sheep is killed for their fleece/skin, with meat a good byproduct. Or option two (The most common). The sheep is killed for their meat and their fleece/skin is used and sold as a byproduct.

Once our sheep are sheared, they go back into their fields to continue their happy natural lives (Hopefully very long and old).

After I've picked a fleece for my newest rug. I begin to remove as much VM (vegetable matter) and sheep muck out of the fleece as I can. It'll then be placed on my large tarp, cut side up and put in the best position that I think will work work as a natural rug. I then take staples of carded Jacob sheep wool and sometimes batts and layer this carefully over the fleece.

After layering a permeable sheet over this array of wool. I begin to lightly cover with pure Olive Oil soap bars and I also add anti-bacterial soap too. I then lightly shower the set up with close to, boiling water and the felting begins. The fleece is now massaged repeatedly, over an hour or so. This is to agitate the wool fibres, to get them to start "felting" together. Creating a false sheep skin, made out of pure wool.

The next step is to roll the fleece up tightly and begin rolling it back and forth repeatedly, around 400 times. This on average takes me 2-4 hours, fleece size dependant. I will stop occasionally to check on the progress of the felt. Sometimes I can be working for hours on this and only to later find the felting has failed, or not how I'd like it. It is a passion of trial and error. Persistence is key.

Once successful, the rug will be laid out flat, outside to dry naturally. This usually takes around a week to fully dry. (In our rain and shine weather).

The final outcome is a gorgeous handmade rug and knowing that the animals are happy and alive still, is the best feeling!