Are your fibre projects ready for an upgrade? Meet the humble wool nepp, the enemy of industrial milling and the prized fibre “sprinkle” that adds texture, colour  and visual interest to your weaving, spinning, and both wet and needle- felting.

Wool nepps are small tangled knots of wool fibres, typically about the size of a peppercorn. During the industrial carding and spinning process, friction and static electricity can cause some of the fibre to pill into small balls of fibre called nepps; larger breakages would be referred to as slubs, but sometimes you will hear the terms nepp and slub being used interchangeably.

In an industrial setting, unintentional nepps and slubs are to be avoided at all costs… but in the hands of an artisan they can be a superpower!

Wool nepps are easy to dye, either in contrasting or complimentary colours before you start your project, or after use in their raw form.

Primary Uses:

• Spinning

• Adding nepps to your fibre as you spin helps you achieve textured or thick-and-thin effects that give your art yarn an organic, handmade feel

• Needle Felting

• Nepps are an easy way to add texture to your project. Since they are made of wool, nepps will bond to your base layers adding scale or fur effects to your critters, or easy landscape elements like gravel, snow, flower centers, etc.

• Wet Felting

• Much like with needle felting, when used with wet felting nepps will easily bond to your base layer of wool giving you a bumpy pebbled surface on hats and scarves. You can also literally use them as sprinkles to add splashes of colour to your project

• Weaving

• Have you ever looked closely at a piece of tweed and noticed the little flecks of colour? Those are nepps in action, adding visual interest to the textile

There you have it: the humble wool nepp, the fibre “sprinkle” that adds texture and pizzazz to all your wool fibre projects!