A yarn pulled by passion: The Woollen Earth

Above left: Gorgeous oversized hats to keep you warm all winter. Above right: Sally Cairns with one of her throws.

A yarn pulled by passion

Story by Hayley Taylor.

Sometimes it just takes a bit of free time to realise your passions and discover a new path in life. Despite a childhood surrounded by her oma’s woollen crafts, it wasn’t until Sally Cairns began travelling that she picked up the crochet hook again, and was, well, hooked.

For many, this new found passion may have remained a hobby but for Sally it’s grown into a successful business – The Woollen Earth – which she now runs from her Fleurieu home. In the beginning though, she was unplugged and on the road, travelling in a campervan with her husband and two young sons.

After a friend showed her the basics of crochet, Sally began to work intuitively with the wool, experimenting, she recalls, with ‘different ways of wrapping the wool around the hook and pulling it through.’ Discovering stitches that worked, and unravelling the ones that didn’t, she realised her new obsession with yarn they found in the rural towns they passed through, albeit much of it cheap and itchy.

The uniquely large loops that make Sally’s work so recognisable were born of the same creative curiosity. ‘I’d seen giant knitting,’ Sally recalls, ‘and I thought, what if I could make my own kind of giant crochet? Because I hadn’t seen anything like that before.’

In the fifteen years prior, Sally had been designing and making couture wedding gowns, so her experience with 3D textiles design was far from that of a novice. However, her jump from the meticulous intricacies of bridal wear, to wool and crochet, allowed a new kind of softness and organic form into her work. famously rode to prosperity on the sheep’s back and it seems the good stuff continues to ride off overseas. Eventually, she found a local farm producing irresistibly soft merino wool. On the drive home, Sally began crocheting straight away. ‘I just had to start working with it. I was so excited, sitting in the passenger seat with all this massive wool on me,’ she says.

Everything about The Woollen Earth is locally sourced, soft, and handmade with love – even Sally’s crochet hooks. Custom carved by Sally’s husband, they begin as fallen gum branches, foraged during family walks around the Fleurieu Peninsula. Naturally varnished to a gorgeous, golden brown with lanolin as the wool slides up and over the hook, Sally says part of the charm is knowing where each eucalypt branch was collected.

As demand for her products has increased, Sally is building a backyard studio inside of a shipping container where she can better fit her giant bundles of wool. ‘There was wool just bursting at the seams in the house,’ Sally says, ‘you’d even end up with wool in your undies, it was just everywhere!’

It’s a labour of love, and with a fashion background, Sally has found her niche in combining an age-old technique with modern design and a sense of place. ‘It’s this ancient craft and I’ve now brought it into a new light,’ Sally says, keen to pass on the knowledge of her craft. She’s currently putting together a kit, for anyone who’s ever wanted to have a crack at crochet themselves.

Sally’s family picks fruit from their trees and collects eggs from their chickens, hoping to teach her boys the joy of sustainable living. Sharing that sentiment, she hopes to use her woolly work to inspire a new generation to ‘think outside of the box instead of just going to a shop to buy.’