Reviving Local Yarn Manufacturing

Brooklyn Tweed supports local textile production by creating quality wool yarns and timeless patterns that appeal to knitters world wide, but are 100% designed, sourced and dyed within the United States

Jared Flood, founder and creative director of Brooklyn Tweed, is “all about the color,” and is the mastermind behind the company’s signature color pallet, which is, as he describes it, “big, beautiful, and covers all bases.” Additionally, the proprietary color recipe for their tweed or “heathered” yarns are designed so that they pair well with other yarns in their catalog.

When visiting Flood recently, we learned that there are less than five mills in the US, and he works with three of them. When he set out to find local mills, he discovered that they mostly specialize in the production of industrial use products, like mops. Flood states that it has taken many years and a lot of work to get local mills up to speed with the nuances of knitting yarn, but the results have been rewarding.

In addition to the creation of quality wool yarn, Brooklyn Tweed has helped reinvigorate textile manufacturing in a small mill towns. One brick-lined town is a bonafide textile village, where a local family specializing in textiles has been working hand-in-hand with Brooklyn Tweed to perfect their heathered yarn manufacturing.

Though business requires consistency in product and swift turn-around for their main lines, Brooklyn Tweed has found a way to work with smaller operations, too. In addition to the large ranches they work with in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and South Dakota, they’ve recently started working with small ranches for their Ranch 01 series. The yarns that come from these collaborations are ranch specific. This last ranch, The Bare Ranch, is run by a knitter herself and the series was dyed used all natural products (flowers, roots, and bugs) from Green Matter Natural Dye Company.

Knitters – keep your eyes open for their Tent Sale, which will likely happen in August or September, where you’ll find enough yarn to keep you busy through the whole winter. Also consider signing up to be one of their many knitters who get paid (in cash or yarn…) to make samples demonstrating their designs and yarns that get sent all over the world.