Robin Hood welcomes the Armley Mill's Sheep

The sheep made by Sarah Barton at Armley Mills has arrived in school.  Miss Hinton has found a home for it in our new reading area.  She said that as the sheep was so colourful it just looked perfect here.

The sheep was made for an exhibition at Armley Mills to celebrate British wool in October 2012.

Every child in our school made a pom-pom from wool which has made up the body of either this sheep or the Robin Hood Primary School Sheep.  Mums, Grandmas, Grandads, sisters, Friendly Faces all helped and as we had so many, we could make two life-sized models. 

They are now both on display in school for you to see.

I hope you like them.  Can you recognise the pom-pom you made?

Visit to Hollings Mill, Bradford

Today I had the pleasure of visiting Hollings Mill in Bradford.
The Mill's owners Edward Hill @ Co. kindly donated much of the wool for the Pom-Pom Sheep project.

Mark Hill showed me around the mill.  It has been a working mill since 1830 and is four floors high.
Mark talked me through the various stages in producing a ball of wool and I saw all the fascinating machinery, much of it had been there for many years.  One of the machines had the maker's stamp and year it was made which was 1930.

There was machinery which unwound wool from cones into hanks to make it suitable for dying and machinery that turned the hanks into balls of wool and I learned there are different ways to wind a ball of wool. I saw where the wool was "relaxed" which is like a sauna for wool!  This makes the wool soft. Another machine created fancy designs which had metallic threads woven into it, whilst Mark showed me a catalogue of all the different effects that can be made, dating back decades.

 

 



Wool can be manufactured here to individual requirements for customers all over the world and it's right here in Yorkshire!

 

 

So thankyou Edward Hill @ Co for donating some fabulous wool.  This is the sheep we made here at Robin Hood Primary School.