From Fleece to Finished Yarn

People often ask me, "Isaac, how did you get into making yarn?" Fair question. I spent eight years in the Army as an explosive ordnance disposal officer, mitigating roadside bombs across two deployments. Good career, fantastic people — but enough of the hard side of the world to make peace tough to find on the other side of it.

Then one day I watched my daughter Chloe knitting. She just looked present — hands moving, building something simple and beautiful. I asked her to teach me, and I fell in love with it. From knitting I fell down the fiber rabbit hole: built my own drum carder on a CNC router, picked up a couple of spinning wheels, and traded an old M240 bandolier bag for a project bag and an RPG case for a needle case. Swords into plowshares, a little sooner than the saying promises.

That's how Crooked Fence Mill was born — a veteran-owned, family-run workshop in Northern Utah that smells like lanolin and cedar shavings. Every fleece that comes through our doors is a story, and we treat each one that way: skirted carefully, washed gently, carded patiently, and spun to Craft Yarn Council weights so what leaves the mill is exactly what you hoped for when it arrived.

Real fiber. Real people. Real stories.