We were lucky to catch up with Alyssa Brown-Tomanek recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Alyssa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

It all began in December of 2021. After a 5 year hiatus from crochet, I picked up a hook and yarn that had been given to me and made roughly 15 hats for the homeless, two pair of mittens, and some ear muffs. Upon further inspection of the yarn I’d received, I found many of the wool yarns came from overseas. I said to my husband, “Your uncle and cousin have sheep. Could I buy wool from them and make my own yarn? I could have a lifetime supply of beautiful, locally sourced and produced yarn!”

We started off by contacting my husband’s uncle. While his breed of sheep wouldn’t be suitable for a soft, next-to-the-skin yarn, his daughter’s Targhee sheep wool would make for an excellent fine grade wool yarn. For reference, Targhee is comparable to Merino in terms of softness.

I had a supplier, but I needed a fiber mill to process the fiber into yarn. A quick Google search told me that there was a fiber mill about 45 miles West of me. I contacted the mill, and they gave me great advice for preparing the wool for the mill: skirt the wool (i.e. remove the tarry, gross bits and pick out as much hay and debris as possible) and wash it in hot water with Dawn dish soap. The mill let me know they had a wait time of about 12 months for processing. I learned that this is very common. There is a shortage of fiber mills in the United States.

With a processor in place, April of 2022, I purchased almost 100 lbs of wool from my husband’s cousin. I spent a week skirting it then I began washing it in the bathtub. This is where exciting things started to happen. I’d created an Instagram account for my yarn making journey and had been sharing updates to it. One of my coworkers saw my posts and connected me with her friend, the owner of a fiber mill only 25 miles south of me with a 6 month turn-around-time. After 6 weeks of washing, late May 2022, I brought her 55 lbs of clean wool for processing. She gave me a tour of her fiber mill and her farm and even let me hug one of her alpacas!

Next came the hard part: waiting
While I waited for processing, I fed my social media accounts and grew a following on both Facebook and Instagram. That’s when I realized that what I was creating wasn’t just for me. OTHER PEOPLE WANTED MY YARN! My local yarn shop wanted to carry my yarn. My friends wanted to buy my yarn. Instead of making a lifetime supply of locally produced yarn for myself, I was making a product. I was starting a business! I began purchasing the tools I would need to dye all of the yarn myself and continued to share updates on social media.

September of 2022, I received word that the mill was starting on my batch of wool. I worked with a graphic designer on a logo, purchased a domain, selected an eCommerce platform, filed for an EIN, and organized as an LLC.
September 16th, 2022: From: Ewe To: You LLC was born.

October 5th, 2022: My yarn was ready for pickup! I had just had surgery two days prior, so my husband drove me out to the fiber mill and we picked up all of my yarn. As soon as I got home, I listed some of the undyed yarn on my website and got my first order! Even though I was on lifting restrictions, I set to work on dyeing all of that beautiful yarn.

November 2022: My yarn debuted at my local yarn shop and is now a permanent fixture in their front room.

December 2022: I quickly realized that the sub 100 lbs of raw wool that I’d purchased would not be enough to keep my business going. I found a North Dakota sheep farmer that offered multiple breeds of sheep that would allow me to further diversify my product offerings and better fill my niche. I purchased 400 lbs of wool from her.

We are still in our infancy, but I am so proud of not only my yarn, but my dryer balls and wool-felted soaps. What started as a science experiment quickly grew into a small business. My advice for any one that finds themself in this situation: You will have to adapt and be able to shift rapidly. Always be thinking of ways you can use the things that you view as waste or trash because most of the time, waste and trash are not waste and trash, just missed opportunities. For instance, wool that isn’t suitable for yarn becomes dryer balls or gets felted around soap to make felted soap. Wool that isn’t suitable for yarn or felting becomes fertilizer for our local community gardens. We do not waste anything here. Everything has a purpose.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My fiber journey started in my childhood. It began with my mother teaching me to make dolls out of yarn, cross stitch, and braid bracelets and grew to a love for crochet, knitting, spinning, and even fiber processing. If you would have asked me in high school what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you, “an artist”. Who would have guessed I would grow up to be a fiber artist?

In addition to offering locally sourced and produced wool yarn, I also carry hand made cat toys and dryer balls (a reusable replacement for dryer sheets) and wool-felted soap (it’s soap with a built in wash cloth and lasts 3Xs longer than regular bar soap).

I am most proud of my business’ connection to the community. I have donated washed wool to the local animal shelter for their Barn Buddies program for use as bedding for barn kitties. I have donated waste wool to a small, locally owned flower farm and the community gardens for use as fertilizer. I did a demo at my son’s elementary school and taught the children how to spin their own yarn using just a pencil. It’s in the works still, but I’ll be teaching 4H kids how to hand process wool and handspin their own yarn. I work with North Dakota sheep farmers to source my wool and I work with a local, North Dakota mill for processing. I keep as much of my work within the state as I can and do as much of the work by myself as possible.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I had fully anticipated being a small yarn business first and only. Big picture, only 50% of the wool on a sheep is suitable for yarn making. That meant I had 50% “waste” that needed to be dealt with that I did not account for. Researching what to do with wool that isn’t suitable for yarn, I learned about felted products. These products do not require minimum lengths as the fibers bond with themselves. Creating cat toys, dryer balls, and felted soaps allowed me to reach a demographic of people who appreciate wool, but do not knit or crochet, doubling my revenue stream.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source of new clients/customers has been social media and word of mouth. Since I worked so hard to preestablish a social media following (both personal and professional), right out the gate, I had people I was able to “advertise” to. Word of mouth has also been a great source of customers for me. I’ve attended several niche events where I met amazing people who were as excited about what I was doing as I was and they were able to help spread the word.

Contact Info:

• Website: fromewetoyoullc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fromewetoyoullc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fromewetoyoullc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/from-ewe-to-you-llc