Fuel Ghoul

Spinrite Dyes Yarn For Knitting; See Inside Factory that Supplies Outlet Store in Listowel Ontario

On 12th November 2013 Fuel Ghoul drove to Listowel Ontario on a business trip to buy knitting supplies at Spinrite Factory Outlet and there I did manage to sneak a peek inside the Spinrite woollen mills.

There's NO Tour of Sprinrite Woolen Mills Available to Public

Don't even ask for a private tour. You have to be very special indeed to walk through those doors with a digital camera in your hand because they frown on a whole lot of picture-taking inside the plant as they hope to keep their best trade secrets safe from prying eyes on the internet. I had to swear an oath on my honour as a respectable alternative energy blogger that I wouldnt betray them and I'm still not even sure these pics I'm sharing today are altogether safe, but they are fascinating .. im sure of that

What exactly happens behind closed doors at Spinrite?  Enquiring minds want to know... Do you want to watch the employees of this leading yarn manufacturer make the yarns and  knitting supplies that they sell across North America and all over the world online? It is pretty interesting...

Kader Cekerek Gave a Tour of the Spinrite Factory Outlet in Listowel

We started at 11:50 am right beside a lunchroom that was filling up with employees and the smell of beef stews and sandwiches drifted into the busy hallway. We all lined up to push a button on a wall dispenser and get an issue of ear plugs, but alas they were too effective and blocked Kader's low pitch voice entirely.

Here comes the wool.

You may have heard people say that something or someone is 'dyed in the wool'? and by that they mean something or someone has a permanent and unchanging adherance to some value or tradition. The saying comes from the schmutz trade or drapers.. You see woven fabric can be dyed in a number of ways; it can be coloured after it is complete, or the threads may be dyed before they are woven. When a color is "dyed in the wool," that means the wool itself is dyed before being spun into threads, so the colour is least likely to fade or change. The fibers below appear to be fresh spun and were dyed in the wool; this is preyarn at the beginning of its long journey through the plant.

Above you can see this bright coloured loosely spun fiber arrives at Spinrite already 'dyed in the wool', or perhaps this material is coming from a different part of the plant? the warehouse?  I loved the colour contrast of this photo. These fibres are so soft before they are spun into yarn - I would have no trouble finding or making a place to take a nap at lunch in here as there are so many soft places to hide and sleep.

I snapped a great many pictures in here - I photographed the entire wool dying sections of the plant but cannot publish them as they are too explicit and expose too many woolwrights' secrets

The air in here has a lovely smell of gentle solvents on a clean cement floor. The staff likes to drink soda pop and every station has an open can beside their machine's controls. The air is filled with odd sounds over a melodrous rattle and hum as miles and miles of yarn is processed, weaved, cleaned, dyed, dried, and bound on spools or wound in skeins for more complicated processing deeper in the plant.

Spinrite makes Advanced Yarn for Knitting

The green spools of yarn on this rack are a composite thread for a green and blue compound weave happening a little further down the line. The blending machines are each manned by one or more persons who smiles and nods as we pass; they're busy keeping an eye on the rigors of the machines.

Inside the Reeling Room, skeins of coloured yarn are wound and cut and moisturized before being packaged in paper bands. Kader says the finishing process has four stages; the wool is balled and then labelled, shrink wrapped, boxed and sent to the warehouse.

Look at the soft pink wool for babies issuing from the steel labeling machine inside the plant.

You can read our travel blog about shopping for yarn and knitting supplies in Listowel, and see all my pictures of the Spinrite Factory Outlet store on Flickr. The photos that I snapped inside the plant are particular close-up shots that won't reveal any trade secrets or liability are all published in the Typepad photo gallery Spinrite Wool Mill.

The tall brick building above was erected in the mid 1900s and is the biggest legacy structure remaining today - remember they aren't really woolen mills at all anymore, but instead the entire complex is a dye shop. Spinrite makes beautiful coloured yarn for knitting and creates and distributes many different brands including Caron, Bernat, Peaches and Cream Yarn, and Phentex yarns which are some of the most popular labels in Canada.

There is a long history of fulling and looming and carding and weaving local wool in Listowel Ontario. There is a much longer history of sheep farming around here and when the first of these woiol mill buildings was erected over one hundred and twenty five years ago, there was a lot of raw wool for milling and terrific profits could be made working that material into blankets, rugs and drapes and sending them to distant markets by train. The process of fulling the freshly sheered fibres requires repetitive mauling and water powered mills were well suited to wool textile production. Spinrite is around today because it catered to the home market with yarn for knitting.

North Perth was once part of the Queen's Bush Settlement 1820 - 1870s ?

There's an explanation detailing some of the earliest (1830s) settlement stories of the Queens Bush on Dumpdiggers, the post is about the randomness of buying knitting supplies in Listowel and how this sleepy village beside the Maitland river came to boast a thriving wool mill. History buffs visting the town can still see the beautiful homes built in the 1800’s.  Visitors are encouraged to take a walk through downtown Listowel which still has many old buildings and step inside the historic Carnegie Library, and enjoy the architecture of Livingstone Manor or the four-storey bell tower of the Italianate-style house that operates as a bed and breakfast.

There's more to Listowel Ontario, the Spinrite Factory Outlet Store and its massive selection of discount coloured yarn.

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Tiverton Ontario, energy hotspot!

 

Located halfway up the Bruce Peninsula, not far from the eastern shores of Lake Huron, Tiverton Ontario is smack in the center of ‘cow country.’ The lush fields and green pastures of Bruce County really do belong to the cows – there are over 163,000 of them living on 3,750 farms. In fact Bruce County is ranked number one in the entire province for cattle; it produces 7.6 per cent of Ontario’s beef and over 80,000 kilograms of milk per year. That’s probably because over 62 per cent of the county is farmed and the soil here is some of the best in the world.

But it wasn’t always like this. Almost every farmer growing crops today had a grandfather or a great grandfather that worked very hard to clear the family plot.

Nothing but unbroken forest greeted Timothy Allan when he first settled in Tiverton in the fall of 1850. He was the first European settler to discover the quality of the soil. After years of back-breaking labour he cleared himself a sizable piece of land and set an example for the other pioneers that followed. In 1857 Norman McInnes opened a general store in what was then called St Andrews. When Canada Post came along in 1860 they changed the town’s name to Tiverton because there was already a St. Andrews in Nova  Scotia.

Tiverton thrived from the beginning, McInnes, the storekeeper and postmaster, started a pot and pearl-ash factory in his back yard. For people who don’t know what this is, potash is an impure form of potassium carbonate (K2CO3) mixed with other potassium salts. Potash is made by collecting and boiling the ashes of hardwood trees. Pearl ash is created by cooking and further refining the potash. The first patent ever issued by the U.S. Patent Office was awarded to Samuel Hopkins in 1790 for an improved method of making pearl ash. Today this industry is almost completely obsolete, but 150 years ago pearl ash had a myriad of uses, including the manufacture of soap and glass. Its principle application was as a detergent for cleaning raw wool – consequently England imported it by the boat load.

McInnis certainly prospered from the settlers burning trees around Tiverton in the 1870’s, and the domestic wool trade fed a healthy demand for pearl ash. Historical records show that Norman McInnes helped finance nearby saw mills and a grist mill, and his money even helped set up a grain market for local farmers. To this day, the McInnes name still appears on the mailboxes of the largest farms in the area.

With agriculture so prevalent in Tiverton, it’s rather surprising the town has become famous for something else – energy. By some strange coincidence, this small community has become a huge energy hotspot. There are three distinctly different energy production centers located in and around the municipality.

Bruce Station is the largest nuclear facility in Canada with eight CANDU reactors and a total output of 6,232 net megawatts (MW). When construction began in 1970 it must have put Tiverton on the map – the map of enemy targets at which the Soviet Union aimed long range ballistic missiles! Thank god the Cold War is over.

Ontario's first commercial wind farm, called Huron Wind is also located near Tiverton. The wind farm consists of five 1.8 MW wind turbines that supply enough electricity to power 3,000 homes on an annual basis. Monitored remotely, the turbines spin approximately 95 per cent of the time, producing variable amounts of electricity in correspondence with the power of the wind. The turbines are 107 meters tall from ground to blade peak.

Tiverton Ontario also boasts an ethanol plant that has been fermenting corn and distilling ethyl alcohol here since 1989. GreenField Ethanol produces 26 million litres of fuel ethanol and industrial grade alcohol at the Tiverton facility every year. Tiverton is a batch processing plant, where corn is processed in ‘batches’, and is also where GreenField Ethanol conducts Canadian-leading ethanol research and development.

While ethanol appears in the press a lot lately due to its many benefits as a sustainable fuel, few people realize the tremendously positive impact on the local economies around the plants themselves. An average-sized ethanol production plant like the one at Tiverton employs about 40 people with good-paying, high-skill jobs and provides spin-off jobs through local providers of goods and services. More than 70 per cent of revenue from an ethanol plant is spent within a 150-km radius of the site. Local people are employed. Local crops are purchased to make the ethanol, and the local tax base is significantly expanded. Farmers also benefit from reduced transportation costs.

For example, GreenField Ethanol plant managers buy local corn and send wet distillers grains back to the feedlots in and around the area. Remember those 163,000 cows? That means there will always be a demand for distillers’ grains in Bruce County.

Back in the autumn of 1850, Timothy Allen couldn’t have guessed that he was clearing one of Canada’s foremost energy hotspots.