Linkulla Spinneri – the Dream Project of Two Friends
The text on the side of the bag says Suffeli, and it is filled with brown, fluffy wool flecked with a few stalks of grass.
Suffeli is the name of a rescue alpaca who lives on a farm called Alpaca Fuente. From there, the fleece was shipped the short distance to Linkulla Spinneri in Inkoo, Southern Finland. Soon Suffeli’s wool will be washed and spun into knitting yarn. And because the wool of each individual alpaca is spun separately, Suffeli’s name will eventually even adorn the band around the skein — an endearing detail sure to delight purchasers.
This is how things are done at Linkulla. They perform all stages of the work themselves, the batches are small, and they never sacrifice their principles. The small-scale spinnery (spinning mill), set up a year and a half ago by Henna Kvarnström (33) and Tove Ramstedt (41) solely uses wool from Finnish sheep and alpacas. They also strive to keep everything as natural as possible.
The starting point for the whole endeavour was Henna and Tove’s common desire to make yarn they themselves would love.
“For me, what I knit with has always been more important than what I knit,” Henna says.
Taking the Plunge
Linkulla Spinneri is situated on the old homestead belonging to Henna’s husband on the shores of Lake Linkulla — hence the name. The area has a long-standing tradition of producing yarn. Lin is Swedish for linen (Swedish is the more prevalent language in this part of Finland), and the old wooden frames once used for retting — breaking down the raw flax — are still in place. The house dates from the late 1800s, and the family has resided here for six generations already. They cultivate the fields themselves, and also keep sheep and chickens. A small quantity of the Linkulla yarn comes from their sheep, and the rest is supplied by farms around Finland. Tove and her family live on the other side of the lake.
The homestead is the reason why Henna originally became interested in spinning. She is a nurse by profession and began knitting when she had to stay home with her children during the Covid pandemic.
“When we moved here, the house was full of old wall rugs, carpets and handiwork equipment. I developed an interest in traditional skills. I took some courses to learn how to weave with a loom and watched YouTube tutorials about old spinning wheels,” Henna tells us.
“When we got some sheep, I began to realise how fantastic Finnish wool is as a fibre. That’s when I began to dream about a spinnery of my own.”
And it might well have been just a dream if she hadn’t gotten acquainted with Tove — thanks to their mutual friends, who thought the two had a lot in common. It turns out the friends were on to something: it was when they originally met, in February 2023, that Henna first suggested they set up a spinning mill.
“I guess we’re both spontaneous enough to just go with it if we come up with something. At that point, we had no clue about what founding a spinning mill would actually mean. We just had an idea and a dream,” says Tove.
In contrast to Henna, Tove was born and bred into a world of yarn and entrepreneurship, as she is the fourth-generation manager of a company called Eiran Tukku, which imports knitting yarn. However, she had long harboured the idea of being part of the production itself – making the yarn instead of just selling it.
Wrench in Hand
The half-serious suggestion soon began to shape itself into reality. Tove and Henna decided to contact an existing spinnery to ask for advice. Just a few weeks after they first met, they were on their way to the village of Mathildedal and the Ruukin Kehräämö spinnery, whose owners had invited them over. Upon their arrival, the owners had a surprising suggestion — as they were about to retire, would Henna and Tove be interested in buying their spinning machines?
“Then we just drew up a business plan and began to apply for financing and subsidies. Some people thought we were ridiculous, others just said, ‘Good for you!’ But I wouldn’t do anything differently,” Tove muses.
“We both tend to think that things happen for a reason. If we had an opportunity like this, why wouldn’t we seize it? It might not happen again, you know,” Henna says.
The two were in luck, as there would have been a three-year wait to get similar, newly produced machines. The old owners taught them how to use the machinery, and throughout the summer of 2023 Henna and Tove honed their skills. At the same time, Henna and her husband turned their old pig house into a spinnery. The concrete floor was laid just before the machinery arrived.
And the machines were something else. The sheer number of them are astounding: the picker, the carder, the drawframe, the spinner, the doubler-winder... In total, spinning wool into yarn takes three days, with the process involving eleven different stages. In addition, there is the maintenance of the machinery. If there’s a problem, you can’t just call a repair service.
“We do it ourselves: changing the bearings, grabbing our wrenches and turning the screws with greasy hands if need be. The manufacturer, Andrew from Canada, has been a tremendous help. We send him videos on WhatsApp, and he tells us what we should do,” Henna says.
“A couple of times we have made blunders, leaving objects where they shouldn’t be, and the machinery has crushed them. Andrew tried to comfort us, saying that someone once left a champagne glass there too!”
Getting the Feel of It
At the spinning mill, Tove’s hands tug on the newly washed wool with smooth, quick movements.
“I noticed very quickly that it isn’t clean yet. I’ve got a good feel of the work by now.”
When Henna and Tove first made yarn, it turned out “horrible”. The yarn was uneven and seemed more like string than knitting yarn. But they persisted, and it wasn’t too long until they began to produce their yarns, which have delighted knitters, particularly because of their softness and lightness. The range includes an alpaca yarn and a Finnsheep yarn along with mixes of the two.
Their goal is to have a selection of multiple yarn weights, from fingering to worsted. But there is something that limits the growth of their range — time. As it stands, all the yarn Henna and Tove are able to produce is sold quickly. The coarser fibres are used to make a thick yarn for carpets, so they don’t go to waste either. And that first unlucky batch of stringy yarn has been put to good use as well: it’s perfect for wrapping up the products.
“We couldn’t make it again even if we tried,” Tove says with a laugh.
The guiding values of Linkulla Spinneri are animal welfare, sustainability and the use of domestic products. The goal is for the fibres to undergo as little processing as possible. The wool is washed using a biodegradable detergent, and the carding oil — which reduces static electricity — is also biodegradable and diluted with water.
“In our daily lives, we are completely surrounded by chemicals. We wanted to create a yarn that is in harmony with nature, and that will itself eventually degrade into nature,” Tove says.
Henna and Tove process the wool by hand and keep the wool of each animal separate from the others. They have sometimes been told that their modus operandi will lead them to bankruptcy.
“But these are our values, and we want to stick by them. We have no desire to get rich or even to make our business grow. It would be quite enough if we could just continue and do this for a living,” Henna explains.
Not all efforts to keep the process natural have been entirely successful. Some time ago, Henna and Tove experimented with wool fermentation, an old method of cleaning the fleece. It involves letting the wool soak in a rainwater tank for a couple of weeks so that the lanolin and the dirt is consumed by bacteria. The wool became clean, but there was a side effect: a horrible smell.
“I have never smelt anything as disgusting,” Tove laughs.
They eventually got rid of the smell by soaking the fleece in a vinegar-water mix, but the process was so arduous that they decided to give up fermenting for now.
The naturalness and the small scale of the production is also a way to stand out in the vast market. Linkulla’s customer base includes a great many avid knitters who share Henna and Tove’s values.
“We realise our yarns are more expensive than those you can buy at the supermarket, but there is a niche for everything,” Henna says.
Extreme Emotions
The first year and a half of Linkulla Spinneri have taught Tove and Henna that you can get a lot done if you just start doing things. At the same time, it’s been a tough time, filled with stress, exhaustion and frustration.
“The previous owners of the machinery told us that it would take eight months to get it all rolling, and that’s what happened,” says Henna. “By now, we’ve reached a more peaceful place.”
For Henna, Linkulla Spinneri is a full-time job, whereas Tove divides her time between the mill and her family’s business. When she is not spinning the wool, Henna spends her time with marketing and taking care of the company’s online shop and social media — along with the animals, her children and various farm tasks.
“I rarely have time for a vacation or even a day off. At the same time, I relish the fact that I get to do what really inspires me.”
When you ask Henna and Tove whether they’ve been surprised by the demand for their yarns, they glance at each other and admit that no, not really: their expectations were high to begin with. As Tove says, if they didn’t have a good deal of self-confidence, they probably wouldn’t have dared to start the business in the first place.
“Right from the start we had a clear vision, and we believed in what we were doing,” Henna says.
Text: Maija Kangasluoma
Photos: Sini Kramer
This feature was first published in Laine Nordic Knits.