Shelridge Farm Wools
Buffy Taylor
 Mail Order
Yarn Distributor
Buffy has developed a yarn production business featuring a wide range of yarn types and a large selection of hand-dyed colours. She originally started out as a sheep producer, and for years she and her family kept up to 150 sheep in the Elora area of southwestern Ontario.
The yarn business grew out of the sheep enterprise, but quickly she outgrew the ability of her sheep to supply all of the fibre that her market required. In 2006, with her husband Don’s retirement from outside employment, she sold the sheep and moved further north to the Durham area where she can focus entirely on yarn production.
Buffy works with a few mills in Canada and the U.S., where she has her Shelridge Farm Soft Touch yarns custom spun to her specifications. The yarn arrives at her shop in Durham on paper cones, and she then winds the skeins and washes and hand-dyes the yarn into her wonderful range of colours.
Her solid colours are produced using an immersion dyeing process, but she also produces handpainted colourways in her fingering weight Ultra yarn. The yarn is sold by the skein, or in custom knitting kits that Buffy puts together based upon designs developed for her by a number of talented Canadian and American knitwear designers, including Maureen Mason-Jamieson, Lucy Neatby, Mabel Corlett and Elizabeth Fallone.
It is not surprising given her sheep background, that all of Buffy’s Soft Touch yarns are based upon wool. She produces four lines of 100% wool yarns – a 2-ply lace weight yarn (Soft Touch Lace), a 3-ply fingering weight yarn (Soft Touch Ultra), a 4-ply DK weight yarn (Soft Touch DKW) and a 4-ply worsted weight yarn (Soft Touch W4).
She also produces a 2-ply DK weight yarn with 85% Wool/15% Cotton (Soft Touch W/C), and a 3-ply fingering weight 85% Wool/15% Nylon yarn (Soft Touch Heather). In developing them, she has concentrated upon using only fine to medium-fine wools to maintain a soft handle or feel. The resulting yarns are wonderfully soft and live up to their “Soft Touch” name!
Buffy maintains a small store at her shop just east of Durham, Ontario. Visitors are welcome almost anytime but she asks that they phone ahead to make sure that she is available. She also attends the main knitting and sheep/wool shows in Canada and the U.S. including the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitting Guild Knitter’s Fair; all three Stitches events in Santa Clara, CA, Schaumberg, IL and Baltimore, MD; and the Maryland, Michigan and New York Sheep and Wool Festivals.
Buffy also maintains a website where all of her yarns, kits and custom patterns can be viewed and purchased. Have a look for yourself – the contact information is shown below. |
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Buffy Taylor
Shelridge Farm Wools
PO Box 1345
403516 Grey Road #4
Durham, ON, N0G 1R0, Canada
Telephone: 1-519-369-1143
Toll Free (Canada & USA): 1-866-291-1566
E-mail: btaylor@shelridge.com
Website: www.shelridge.com
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