Buying Canadian Yarn

02 Feb 2025suppliersCanadian contentyarn

There’s been a surge of interest lately in Canadian products, so I thought I’d geek out about the area I know best - yarn! Canada doesn’t really have an end to end textile supply chain to go from raw materials to fabric, but, you can get 100% Canadian yarn to weave with (or knit, crochet, etc). There’s also yarn made in Canada from imported materials, Canadian hand dyed yarn, and at least one Canadian company that produces yarn across North America. This post complements my other post on Weaving Suppliers in Canada; but here I’m focused on the producers of yarn rather than retailers, and the information here is also very relevant to other fiber artists like knitters and crocheters, and many of these suppliers will also sell fibre for spinners.

I can’t possibly maintain a full list as there are many small producers, but there absolutely are lots of ways to buy Canadian or at least partially Canadian yarn at a wide range of price points. For more producers across the country, check out Canadian Wool’s producer directory, and see if your local (or not so local) Fibreshed affiliate has producers near you!

What kind of yarn is made in Canada? #

In Canada, there’s a number of options for animal hair based yarn that is harvested, spun, and dyed in Canada. Think wool (sheep), alpaca (alpacas), mohair from goats, and even qiviut from muskox!

Our climate is suitable for growing some plant fibers like flax (linen) and hemp, though we have extremely limited capacity to spin it; in recent years there have been some groups working on that though it’s in the very early stages. There are also some companies spinning cotton and synthetic yarns in Canada, but cotton doesn’t grow well here.

Much of the wool from Canadian sheep currently goes to waste; the limiting factor for 100% Canadian wool is milling capacity - this is also why sometimes the fiber may have come from local animals but had to travel a long distance to get processed into yarn. If you take up hand spinning you can get fleeces for free or cheap if you put the work into cleaning them!

100% Canadian Yarn #

Briggs and Little in New Brunswick and Custom Woolen Mills in Alberta are the two bigger mills in Canada working with Canadian wool; you can find their products at some local yarn stores and directly on their websites. Briggs and Little is probably the most widely available and least expensive 100% Canadian wool yarn.

There are a number of small or mini mills across the country that make yarn from Canadian animal fiber (e.g. wool, alpaca, mohair), and one, Taproot, in Nova Scotia, that produces a small amount of linen yarn from Canadian grown linen (in addition to wool). Many of these smaller mills do runs for individual farmers and sometimes are even identifiable to a specific animal! However, some of this yarn can be fairly pricey.

Small batch, single farm yarn is often sold online by the mills and/or farmers, or at fiber festivals. Some examples of farms in Ontario that sell yarn are Revolution Wool Co and Topsy Farms, and mohair/wool blend yarn from Belles Bouclettes (I got some at my local weaver’s guild sale!). Check out Fibreshed and Canadian Wool for more even closer to you!

Canadian Owned Yarn Companies #

There are also some companies that are Canadian owned that don’t advertise themselves as 100% Canadian yarn.

MacAuslands in PEI makes both very reasonably priced yarn and other goods, notably wool blankets (making them one of the few places in Canada that operates power looms). Their wool fibre comes from across Canada and the US, though mostly Atlantic Canada, so they don’t advertise their yarn as 100% Canadian but it seems close.

Spinrite is one of the bigger players in the North American “craft yarn” world, and is based in Listowel, ON. They are more aimed at knitting and crochet than weaving; they own a number of brands including Sugar n’ Cream, Patons, Bernat, and others, that are often sold at bigger retailers like Michaels or Wal-Mart, or via their website Yarnspirations. They have operations across Canada and the US and It can be hard to track down where a particular yarn is made; since they sell into the US a lot one thing you’ll find is that some of their labeling will say things like “Spun in North America out of US grown cotton”, which will often mean it’s spun in Canada.

For weaving yarn, Maurice Brassard is a big name in weaving yarns and they are based in Plessisville, QC. A few of their products are specifically noted as “spun and dyed in Quebec”, at least some of those by Lemieux Spinning.

Canadian Dyed Yarn #

There are a lot of small dyers out there, and I can’t possibly list them all! Like the smaller woolen mills, their products are often easiest to find at fibre festivals and online. Local to me in Ottawa, Alley Kat Yarns stands out as an indie dyer who uses Canadian grown, traceable yarn for some of their products, while Sweet Georgia is a big one, based in Vancouver, whose products are sold at a number of yarn stores across the country (note that by big I mostly mean it’s not just one person!).

Final Words #

Canada produces plenty of wool, but there is a shortage of milling capacity, so much of it goes to waste; supporting those mills that do exist will help them expand and help others build a business case to start up. While we don’t produce a lot of the well known Merino wool, there is lots of high quality, soft, Canadian wool out there, and more that’s suitable for hard wearing applications like rugs. Most of the wool yarn I’ve bought in the past couple years has been buying from smaller Canadian producers at fibre festivals, but I haven’t turned too much of it into projects yet!

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