No Fleece Left Behind: Meet a Zero-Waste Woolen Mill

With a passion for supporting local shepherds and fiber farms, Jessica Schwab and Anna Hosick-Kalahan, owners of Skagit Woolen Works in Mount Vernon, Washington, turned their love of natural fibers into a full-service wool mill that supports small farms and promotes zero-waste production. Their work at the mill emphasizes creativity, sustainability, and community, transforming every fleece into products like yarn, roving, felt, and wool pellets while fostering appreciation for regional wool. Let’s find out more about how they got started, how they’re working to create "wool ambassadors," and about the hands-on work they find to be very rewarding.
—Editors

Farm & Fiber Knits: Not many knitters find themselves growing a woolen mill from the ground up—how did Skagit Woolen Works come to be?

Jess: Our journey to starting the mill began with our love of crafts and natural materials. We saw a need for more of the materials we love to use; seeking out locally sourced and produced materials was a challenge, and we knew there were shepherds clamoring for mill services. The lack of infrastructure is a huge part of that puzzle, and when the opportunity to purchase our first piece of machinery came up—a century-old industrial carder lovingly named Rosie—we knew it could be the start of something big for us and our fiber community. We translated our love of natural fibers—both in craft and lifestyle—into a rapidly growing, full-service mill with a focus on processing for small fiber-producing farms in our region, the Pacific Northwest.

Anna: So much of our experience with handcrafting informs our business work, in terms of concepts and structural understanding of the hands-on parts but also in terms of our deep passion to grow and nurture the crafting communities that we come out of.

Get a closer look! Click any image in the gallery below to open it in full-screen mode.

FFK: I imagine some parts of the process are more fun than others—what do you love?
Jess: I love coming up with creative uses for our regional wool. We started out by aiming to make use of 100% of the fleece that came through our mill, whether or not it was textile quality. That’s led to some creative solutions to the abundance of wool in the region. I also love twisting and labeling our roving and yarn. There’s something satisfying about looking at the final product and thinking about all the hands that touched that fiber along the way, from the loving care of the shepherds, the shearers, and throughout the processing at our mill.

Anna: I love the opportunities to continue learning and experiencing new things. Each individual project gives me new opportunities to pick up new insight into our process and materials. The business has also opened wonderful paths for me to learn about entirely new and exciting avenues related to our industry, such as machine maintenance and operations and the history that’s tied up with textile production in our region and beyond.

Anna works on some of the equipment. Photo by Jessica Schwab

FFK: It seems like you really enjoy both the hands-on daily work at fleece level as well as the big-picture impacts on the fiber community?

Jess and Anna: We’re both really passionate about the collaborative process in our work and love that so much of it is done by hand. When we give presentations on regional wool processing, our goal is to create “wool ambassadors.” Our crafting community is amazingly supportive of our work, and we owe them a lot for the support they continually show for our products. We hope we can instill a joy in seeking out natural wool products beyond crafts. Additionally, as many big cool machines as we have, our work is still very hands-on—every fleece, every hank or skein we twist, every lock we tease open—our hands are still our best tools, making it very labor intensive but also highly rewarding.

Island Twist, from the Winter 2025 Collection. Jess and Anna say, "We hand-selected Romney fleeces for color and softness from the Puget Sound region and blended them with long, crimpy, super-soft alpaca for a sumptous hand and wonderful drape with next-to-skin softness." Photo by Jessica Schwab

FFK: Are you continuing to grow the mill to include additional products and options?

Jess and Anna: We’re a zero-waste mill, which means that everything we receive (even the really dirty stuff!) can be transformed into a value-added product either for our retail customers or the producers we service. We have an immense array of sheep breeds and alpaca herds throughout our region, and getting to know each farm, each fleece is a rewarding challenge. Finding the best use of that abundant resource—be it yarn, roving, quilt batts, stuffing, felt, or wool pellets—is our ultimate goal. We can elevate even the humblest of fleeces by just spending time with the wool and letting its properties guide its best use.

In 2023, our friends and mill mentors at Abundant Earth Fiber needed to find a new home for their spinning equipment. We’d been learning from them and working with them from the beginning, and their guidance and trust gave us the confidence to pursue our dream of making our own yarn. The universe gave us the perfect opportunity to grow our business, carry on the work that Abundant Earth has been doing for over a decade, and be an even greater benefit to our fiber community. Adding spinning to our already full line-up of services has proved somewhat humbling but also highly gratifying when we have those ‘aha!’ moments and transform the wool into something we’re proud to offer our customers.

Visit Skagit Woolen’s website at skagitwoolen.com or Instagram and Facebook @SkagitWoolenWorks to learn more about what they’re up to at the mill.

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Anna Hosick-Kalahan is the co-owner and mill manager of Skagit Woolen Works in Mount Vernon, Washington. She has a great finesse with the myriad machines at the mill and loves problem solving. Anna has been crafting and practicing the fiber arts for decades, mainly knitting, spinning on her growing spinning wheel collection, and weaving.