What is waulking?
Traditionally, Scottish women would gather around a table with a newly-woven, wool tartan cloth. They would sing Gaelic folk songs and beat the cloth together in rhythm with the pulse of the music. In agitating it, the wool shrinks, becomes full, dense, durable and solid, a technique also known as "fulling."
We carry on this tradition in an unconventional way. Instead of shrinking a woven cloth, we take a single strand of yarn, knit or crochet an entire item--toy, figurine, home decor item--and then we agitate it to
close up the entire surface stitches. Here is an example of an item (on the left) which has only been crocheted, and the same type of item which has been crocheted and then waulked (on the right). As you can see, the stitches are undetectable. They puff up on themselves to create a dense, yet lightweight wool fabric.
Once an item is fully-waulked, we can also harden the wool--a technique that isn't done on regularly knitted or crocheted items. in doing this to say, an ornament, it becomes textured like fleece but it holds its shape, and it's also hard and unbreakable. This ensures heirloom-quality ornaments and collectibles. These ornaments look soft and plushy, they're not! They are hard and unbreakable.
