Maine Top Mill

[MaineTopMill]

Hi everyone. I’m Erin from the Maine Top Mill. My dad & I have our own worsted top making mill here in Maine. We specialize in fine wool & unique blends. Rambouillet and Chiri Cloud 80’s are the 2 fibers that we started with, since there’s some amazing Rambouillet grown right here in America and because we had to find a way to process the totally uniform 17-19 micron alpaca fiber our former breeding program made. We branched out into making unique blends from fine wool & other fibers and have started making yarns from our tops & blends too. We make all our blends at our mill and our yarns are spun at one of several American spinning mills. We can also make custom top blends & yarns with a 2-3lb minimum.

These are a few examples of what we make.

-18.2um Rambouillet top, DK weight yarn & 3/18 yarn
-Chiri Cloud 80’s/Rambouillet top, 3/18 Chiri Cloud 80’s yarn
-14.5um merino/yak with either white, light brown or brown yak
-Rambouillet/Angora top & yarn
-Merino/Rose top & yarn
-Flax/Mint/Faux Cashmere top
-Mixed BFL/Rambouillet top, DK weight yarn & 2/8 yarn
-Gotland/Rambouillet
-Baby Camel/Merino/Rambouillet

Lightspeed blends are subtly elegant blends of merino, rambouillet & either firestar or angelina.

-cStorm is dyed 19.5um grey merino/rambouillet/firestar & is available as top or yarn
-cArctis is 18.5um white merino/rambouillet/firestar & is available as top
-cHyperspace is 14.5um merino/rambouillet/angelina & is available as top or yarn

Flax/Mint/Faux Cashmere is one of our newer hypoallergenic vegan blends. Along with Black Diamond Bamboo/Faux Cashmere and Pearl/Seacell/Angelina. Only the Pearl/Seacell/Angelina is available as yarn

Something else we have are spinning kits. Each kit has 1oz each of 3 different blends plus information about the fiber, sheep, fiber processing, & spinning. They’re designed to help spinners have fun while learning.

We have videos of me spinning all of our blends on our YouTube channel, plus a couple of the educational classes we’ve done.

When we’re at fiber shows, we have touch & feel displays of everything we make. So how to convey softness virtually? Puppies are super soft, and we have a new puppy who’s the inspiration behind our SnuggleMaster Softness Scale.

Right now our tops, top blends & hand dyed tops are all 20% off with code RHINEBECKLOVE through October 31. Our yarns are 25% off. Orders over $50 ship free. Our website is https://mainetopmill.com/. Send us an email or give us a call if you’d like to meet via Zoom to ask questions & watch us squish really soft fiber.

[MaineTopMill]

Our tops, top blends & dyed tops are all 15% off now with code KIND15.

[MaineTopMill]

This is a talk my dad gave about worsted top making…the history of the process, similarities & differences with hand processing & more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S76UblcLb4

Both of us love to dive deep in to the technical side of all things fiber. That, and my own struggles when I was learning to spin, inspired our spinning kits. These have 1oz of 3 different tops or top blends we make plus information about the fiber itself, processing & tips and tricks for spinning. They’re kind of designed to build on each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9UhHlDFs2Q

[MaineTopMill]

This is one talk my dad gave about the history of worsted processing, how hand combing was mechanized and some of the differences between how top from one mill could behave totally differently from top from another mill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S76UblcLb4&t=33s

This blog article is where I go into some of the more technical aspects of fiber, and how that affects how the fiber itself feels & performs.

https://mainetopmill.com/blogs/news/exploring-the-technical-side

This one talks about the start of wool processing, including how environmental factors can affect wool.

https://mainetopmill.com/blogs/news/building-on-the-basics

[MaineTopMill]

Our Black Friday sale is going on now. Purchases of over $30 of top, top blends, hand dyed tops & spinning kits are 25% off automatically at checkout. Yarns are also 25% off.

Spinning Kits Each one comes with 1oz of 3 of the different tops that we make, plus information about the sheep breed, wool use, processing & tips & tricks for spinning. They’re designed out of some of the struggles I faced when I learned to spin, and also to help empower new spinners as you gain confidence. One of the first things I wanted to do once I mastered the basics was branch out into new fibers.

Stacked Rib Reversible Hat This is a very easy, fast hat to knit that’s also very elegant. I put together a full walkthrough to help make resizing it super simple.

cNemesis 1.0 is of my favorite yarns. I was playing around with blending fibers, and black merino went perfectly with firestar nylon. Adding a little Rambouillet adding some more elasticity.

Both my dad & I love animals, and we have a new puppy. She’s the inspiration behind the tops I dyed this year. Some of it is on Polwarth/Rambouillet, where the Rambouillet adds some elasticity and softness to the Polwarth. Merino/Rambouillet is the other base. The main difference between merino wool and rambouillet is the crimp. Merino has a very tight zipper like crimp. Rambouillet’s crimp is 3D and helps open up & fluff up the merino so its easier to spin.

This is a selection of some of the top that we make, plus some roving made from the older alpacas we used to have.

From back left to right, there’s some ChiriGenesis roving (totally uniform alpaca that’s about 23 microns), Gotland/Rambouillet top, 14.5 micron merino/light brown yak.

Then cNemesis 1.0 in the middle on top and Rambouillet on the bottom.

Then in front from left to right, Mixed BFL/Rambouillet (blend of oatmeal & brown BFL and 40% rambouillet…super soft & bouncy, baby camel/merino/rambouillet/mint, and then Rambouillet/brown yak.

This is just a few of the over 30 different tops we make here, not including the newer cellulose blends.

[MaineTopMill]

February 2022: We’re now unpacked here in north Florida. At least to a functional level. So the website is open again for orders. We’re just moving a bit slower than normal since we’re working on some logistics issues.

October 2021: Just a quick update, we won’t be able to ship orders until 2022 since we’re moving. Its kinda hard to ship orders when things are packed, including my work computer. We’ll be back at some point TBD in 2022.

[MaineTopMill]

Just fyi our website is presently down, since we ran into some fairly major problems with our current host. The kinds of issues that broke our website that are in the realm of what a hosting company is supposed to handle. So the website will be down until we’re able to get a new site up and running. Another problem we are facing are security & privacy concerns with the major online payment processors. We are still searching for one that meets our high standards for security & privacy. Until then, if you are interested in placing an order just send us a pm. This is an old, archived version of our website so you can see the products we make.

[FreedomLover]

I hope everything is resolved soon.