Svenskt Finullsfår (Swedish Finewool) - Sweden

Svenskt Finullsfår, otherwise known as Swedish Fine Wool Sheep are descended from the Nordic short-tailed sheep.  They are a friendly breed whose individuals are easily tamed.  They are commonly used in production, as the breed has a high fertility, produces good meat carcases, wool and sheepskins.  They have high milk production, good maternal qualities and that the ewes can go into heat all year round.  This makes the Svenskt Finullsfår the sheep breed in Sweden that produces the highest total lamb weight per ewe and year. 

During the 1930s, all landrace sheep were recorded as one and the same breed.  A division into wool types was made in 1935 and from 1936, landrace sheep were recorded in the studbook under three wool types; fur, rya and fine wool.  The fur type was separated into its own breed in 1971 and other landrace sheep were combined into "white landrace".  In 1976, the Sheep Control Authority took over the pedigree registration of sheep.  During the 1930s and 1940s, repeated imports of Finnish Fine Wool were made and the Svenskt Finullsfår were then considered by many to be Finnish.  

From the 1950s, landrace sheep have been used for crossing with meat-breed sheep to increase their productivity.  The number of landrace sheep fell sharply again.  In the 1980s, interest in the Svenskt Finullsfår picked up again.  New imports were made from Finland.  The Swedish Fine Wool Association, which was formed in 1988, was however able to show that the Svenskt Finullsfår had been genetically very little affected by the imports and in 1995 the Swedish Board of Agriculture included the Svenskt Finullsfår as a breed in the list of Swedish livestock breeds and from 1998 the breed was eligible for environmental support.

The Svenskt Finullsfår is classified as an endangered livestock breed and is eligible for support from the Swedish Board of Agriculture.  Conservation is primarily carried out "in situ" i.e. by keeping as many live animals as possible in different herds.  The Swedish Fine Wool Sheep Association is a breed association and works to support conservation work by establishing breeding plans, holding courses and spreading knowledge about the Svenskt Finullsfår.  

The head and legs of the Svenskt Finullsfår are wool-free and shiny.  The tail is short with a broad base and a narrow, wool-free tip.  The ears are small and thin, the bridge of the nose is straight or slightly convex.  both sexes are polled.  The animals are curious, social and affectionate with a lively temperament.  They are good foragers and have the ability to, outside the gestation and lactation periods, feed on leaner pastures and are therefore well suited to landscape management.

The fleece is characterised by its soft, shiny, silky and fine-fibred wool, and is available in white, black and brown and more rarely, speckled.  The wool is similar over the entire body, which means that entire fleece can be used for the same purpose.  Fibres are crimpy and lustrous, with good elasticity.  Conservation breeding efforts since the 1930s have emphasised the wool quality, aiming for fibre diameters in the range of 15 to 25 microns with fibre lengths between 1¾ and 2½ inches (4.5cm - 6.5cm).

In 2017, there were 3,473 ewes and 254 rams.  Of these, 2,214 ewes and 224 rams were kept in purebred breeding, distributed over 104 herds.  The Svenskt Finullsfår are found throughout Sweden, but are most common in the southern and central parts. Between 2004 and 2009, the Fine Wool population in Sweden increased and at its peak was just under 5,000 individuals in purebred breeding.

At the beginning of 2018, a closed studbook was introduced for the breed, which means that there is no risk of crossbreeding with other breeds in the purebred population.  Pedigree registration and record keeping are handled by Elitlamm, which is linked to the Swedish Sheep Breeding Association.

I bought this breed in as 113g of unwashed raw fleece that was part of a sample pack that featured 8 different Swedish breeds that I purchased back in early May 2022 from Anita Grahn based in Uppsala, Sweden.  Her online shop has been empty for a long time now, since she announced she was in hospital, so I don't know if she survived whatever she was in hospital for.  However, I can provide a link to Swedish Fibre, a small business run by Sandy Zetterlund who has a passion for knitting, wool, spinning and now a passion for bringing these beautiful fleece from these rare conservation sheep kept by small farmers into the limelight and put them in front of similarly passionate hand spinners like myself who care about ensuring the future and continuation of these rare and unique breeds.  The demand for and sale of the fleece from these rare breeds really do help the survival of the breed.  

I washed this on 25th May 2022, and the water turned quite brown and milky too, so it was both dirty and greasy. I honestly thought that I had somehow managed to felt it during the washing stage, but once it was dry it all just poofed up, and it wasn't felted. Phew!  

I had 92g of clean, washed fleece ready for preparing.  I tried combing this, but the fibre lengths were too short, and I couldn't open the locks up very well, so it has sat in a bag waiting for me to figure out how I was going to process it until I bit the bullet and got on with it on 14th May 2025.  I've never gotten to grips with carding, but I managed to at least open up the locks using a pair of carders, and then I added the short fluff straight onto my combs from the carders, and I managed to comb it a little bit to remove the rubbish and then dizzed it off my combs.  From the pile of rubbish that was building up, it looked like I was throwing away at least 50%, but from my 92g of washed fleece I now have 61g of fluff ready to spin.

I started spinning this on 6th August. It was tricky because the fibres are so short, and I had to add more twist than normal to keep it together. Plying was easier, although in some places it looked overplied and in other places it looked underplied. I didn't finish spinning until 8th August, and I achieved a yarn that was 58g/197m and very soft.

I knit the sample piece from 1st to 3rd September, and the knitted fabric is soft with a slight fuzziness.

Ouessant - France

Ouessant sheep, (pronounced weh-SAHN), are named for the small rocky French island in the English Channel known as Ushant or Ouessant, where the breed was developed.  They are also known as Mouton d'Ouessant and Breton Island Dwarf. They are a primitive, heritage breed of sheep that belong to the Northern European Short-Tailed family of sheep. The are reputed to be the smallest sheep in the world with rams standing just 49cm at the withers and ewes standing at 45cm at the withers.  The island's shepherds traditionally selected for smaller sheep that could produce a bit of meat and fibre on limited feed, they also strongly selected for black sheep.  Although the breed can throw an occasional white animal, most are solid black or moorit brown.  

Rams have two relatively large horns, ewes are polled.  Black and brown rams grow dark horns whilst the white rams grow lighter coloured horns. Ewes are single-lambing, and the breed is primarily used for wool production.  They are strong and very hardy and extremely sensitive to threats and danger and will flock together to protect themselves and their lambs from predators.  They are able to survive on meagre pasture and are also capable of producing a good amount of high-quality wool.  In Paris, the city government recently began using a small herd of Ouessant sheep to graze public lands.  They are also used to graze vineyards and orchards.

The Ouessant existed exclusively on its home island until the beginning of the 20th century, when they almost went extinct and were only saved by a few aristocrats allowing the few remaining sheep to graze and breed on the land surrounding their chateaux.  Though no longer found there, they are widespread throughout Europe, with Ouessant breed societies in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, and the UK.  The breed is also gaining in popularity in the US and NZ.

As they are one of the Northern European Short-Tailed breeds they have retained the tendency to shed their fleece. The fleece is of a primitive type, double-coated, well packed.  Rams develop manes of longer coarser hair and kemp on the nape of their necks and throats which may be darker.

The fleece generally weighs 1kg - 1.6kg for a ewe or 1.1kg - 1.8kg for a ram.  Average staple lengths are 3¼-4 inches (8-10cm) long but can be shorter or longer than this average.  The undercoat can be quite fine, with micron counts in the mid to lower 20s.  The outercoat can be quite a bit coarser, in the mid 30s.  The average is 25-28 microns. Typical of double coated fleeces, the staples are triangular, with wide bases consisting of the fine undercoat and very pointed tips formed by the coarse guard hairs.  

It will be pointless trying to dye a dark fleece but a white or grey fleece can be dyed, taking into account the base colour and the fact that different fibre types in the fleece will take dye differently.

The different coats can be separated or spun together.  Combing and flicking will separate the different fibres but you can also just hold the lock and pull the longer hairs out by hand.  You can card the fibres if they aren't too long but it will be difficult to keep everything together and mixed.  If you are separating the fibres you will have to judge when to stop removing any shorter guard fibres in the knowledge that the yarn will only ever be as soft as the coarsest fibres.  Guard hairs are most co-operative if spun worsted style.  The undercoat can be spun worsted if its long enough, or woollen.

If you make a yarn that contains both coats it will have texture but will always be scratchy.  Outercoat yarns make fabulous warp yarns in weaving, although can be knitted or crocheted for something requiring strength and texture, such as a crochet storage basket.  The undercoat on its own can be soft enough for socks, mitten or other garments.

I brought this breed in as 100g of washed fleece in May 2022, but it was so dirty with dust and soil that I washed it myself before I combed it.  

I didn't actually comb it until February 2024, leaving me with 50g of lovely spinning fibre that is soft and bouncy.  The reason for so much loss was that the fleece was full of VM and scrappy little bits of short fibres/second cuts about 1cm long.  Interestingly though, I did not realise that this breed was a double-coated breed at the time of preparing the fibre. I certainly didn't notice it in the fleece that I prepared, and I can't really see it in any of the photos either.

I started spinning this on 4th August, finished on 5th August and it was a pleasant, easy and straightforward spin, very much like spinning Jacob or any of the "downs" breeds. It is relatively soft and very bouncy. I achieved a yarn that was 46g/176m.

I knit the piece for the project on 29th August. It is a proper black, black rather than the often brown-black of so many dark-coloured fleeces.

Åsenfår - Sweden

Åsenfår or Åsen sheep are a forest type of sheep and one of 10 Swedish Heritage breeds. They belong to the group of Northern European Short Tailed sheep and show the same characteristics as many other breeds in this group for being smaller and hardy. Most are dual-coated due to the colder northerly climates, adaptability to their specific location and availability of food, with many in this group happy to eat non-grass vegetation such as leaves, bark, shrubs and seaweed, with each breed in this group also being unique in their own right.  Most breeds in this group are also on the verge of extinction or have been on the verge of extinction and are in conservation programmes to preserve genetics and increase numbers as they are not desirable to large industry due to small meat carcass and non-uniformity of fleece in both length and softness. However, they are extremely desirable to small-scale farmers and hand spinners

In the 1990's they were re-discovered on just 3 farms in the village of Åsarna, in county Dalarna in west central Sweden and had been kept with no interference from other breeds for many years by farmers striving to hold onto the kind of sheep that had always been on the farm for many generations of farmers.  Their genetics have been preserved in the "Gene Bank" of the Swedish Farm Sheep Association since 1997 and farmers who are members of that Association are not allowed to breed for specific traits or characteristics or try to improve the sheep in order to keep the breed true.  This is very much a conservation breed and by 2020 the numbers had grown to 465 registered breeding ewes across 55 farms and in 2021 this number grew again to 489 registered breeding ewes.   

They are usually smaller than the average sheep.  The rams weigh about 45-55kg and are about 63cm at the withers and the ewes about 40-50kg and about 61cm at the withers.  These are hardy animals bred to live on forest pasture in the summer and poor feed during the winter. The tail is short and often bald. They can become very affectionate if time is spent with them.

Rams are typically horned, and ewes are usually polled but might have scurs, which are small loose growths that resemble incomplete horns.  The rams' horns can vary in size but can be very large.  There is no specific lambing season, and lambs can be born at different times of the year as the ewes come into season depending on the availability of food rather than temperature and daylight, although they tend not to come into season during the summer to ensure lambs are not born during the coldest and bleakest times of winter.  First-time mothers usually have one lamb, and as they mature, will often have twins.  Triplets can be born from time to time.

They come in a range of colours, including white, brown, grey, and black, and can be coloured with white patches.  The lambs are usually born black or fawn, sometimes with white markings, but can lighten with age, and some lambs can be black and white. Colours within one flock will vary greatly due to varying ages of individuals. 

The fleece are not consistent, and not only do they vary from individual to individual but there are different types of wool on each individual.  They can produce coarse and fine wool, and anything in between, within an individual fleece.  Some individuals have kemp in their fleece. There are 4 types of fleece within this breed: Pälsull type: mostly outercoat with a little undercoat; Rya type: usually 50/50 outercoat and undercoat; Vadmal type: mostly undercoat with a small amount of outercoat; and Finull type: almost all undercoat. It is easy to work with and can be spun or felted.  It is possible to separate the undercoat and the outercoat fibres, or you can spin them together for warmth, strength and stability. Due to the variety of wool types in this breed, it could be used to make a whole variety of garments or even as weft yarn for weaving.  The softest undercoat fibres from a lamb's fleece could be used for next-to-skin garments.

 

I bought this breed in as 101g of unwashed raw fleece that was part of a sample pack that featured 8 different Swedish breeds that I purchased back in early May 2022 from Anita Grahn based in Uppsala, Sweden who added an announcement to her shop in October of 2024 stating that she was in hospital and she has not posted anything since. Her online shop is empty as of August 2026. I do hope she is OK.  However, I can provide a link to Swedish Fibre, a small business run by Sandy Zetterlund who has a passion for knitting, wool, spinning and now a passion for bringing these beautiful fleece from these rare conservation sheep kept by small farmers into the limelight and put them in front of similarly passionate hand spinners like myself who care about ensuring the future and continuation of these rare and unique breeds.  The demand for and sale of the fleece from these rare breeds really do help the survival of the breed.  

The sheep this fleece came from had been raised on a small family farm.  I had no idea as to exactly what colour this was going to be until I washed the sample of fleece on Friday 27th May 2022.  

Raw fleece, waiting to be washed

Washed fleece

As you can see, the colour has changed somewhat. What I thought were dirty tips were actually dark hairs, although some of the dark hairs were longer and dispersed throughout the locks; the majority were shorter and seemed to be congregated in the tips.  After washing, my sample weighed 73g.  

After combing this small amount of fleece I have 46g of top to spin.  It is not a pure white fibre, more of a creamy white to pale fawn kind of colour.  Most of the dark hairs were removed during combing, but some, the longer ones, remain and add to the colour, texture and interest of this fibre.

It's been a while since I combed this fleece, but I have finally spun it now, and it was an interesting and lovely spin. It is part longwool type and part shorter soft wool, but it didn't feel like I was spinning a double-coated fleece at all. The colour looks slightly off-white-cream-beige when I am spinning it, but when I stop, it is easy to see that it is different-coloured fibres, especially really fine black fibres, that are affecting the colour.

The finished yarn is relatively soft with just a tiny little bit of prickliness and is 44g/180m. I spun it over 3rd and 4th August, and when I washed the skein, the water turned quite milky, which means that a lot of grease washed out. 

I knit the piece for my project over 27th and 28th August 2026 and I really like the pale mottled colour of the knitted fabric.

Blue Texel - The Netherlands

Blue Texel sheep are derived from the Texel sheep and named after the island of Texel just off the coast of the Netherlands, where Lincoln and Leicester Longwool sheep were crossbred with the native sheep in the mid-1800's with the goal of achieving a high-quality meat breed.   Blue-woolled lambs were sometimes born in Texel flocks, but no attention was paid to them until the early 1970's when deliberate breeding for the blue colour began, and some all-blue flocks were established.   By 1983 there were 213 blue sheep across 11 flocks.  By 2009, numbers had risen to about 6500, and they were classed as "not at risk", but by 2021 numbers had dropped to about 4000, with 2545 registered breeding ewes, and they have been re-categorised as "endangered/at risk".   

This breed are medium size and the blue can vary from very pale to dark but no part of the fleece is wholly black or white but usually the head, shoulders and rump are darker with the lighter shade over the back.  The rams weigh about 100kg and are about 72cm at the withers and the ewes about 80kg and about 68cm at the withers.  Both sexes are polled.  They are a breed that is raised primarily for meat and the fleece are a secondary crop.

 

I bought this breed in as 100g of washed raw fleece back in May 2022 from a lady from whom I bought many of the breed samples for my British Sheep Breed Project.  I have purchased a number of samples from her for this Non-British Breed Project too, although she doesn't stock very many breeds that fit this category.  It was described as a lovely soft fleece with locks that are springy with a crisp feeling and with a partially organised crimp that is easy to spin and has a lofty quality.  This fleece has come from a prize winning flock in Oxfordshire here in the UK.  This a really hard to find breed that I haven't seen for available in any of the usual spinning fibre stores here in the UK.

Although it was sold as pre-washed and I wasn't intending to give it another wash but after washing other pre-washed samples and seeing how much lanolin washed out I decided to wash it again as a precaution on 31st May 2022 and I'm glad that I did as the water turned quite milky when I put the fleece in which confirmed to me that it was still full of lanolin.  Lanolin is not a bad thing, it's actually good for dry skin, but it's bad when you are trying to comb a fleece as it makes it really hard work and makes your wool combs all sticky and nasty.  

I combed this on 18th January 2024 and it gave me 60g of lovely hand combed top that shows lots of variation of colour, although one hand combed nest in particular does stand out from the crowd so I might need to do something with that to blend it in with the others.

I split the fibre into two equal piles, undid all the fibre nests in the first half, and put all the ends together and pre-drafted from all of them at the same time to even out the colours and tones as much as possible. I had to spin it as fine as I could, as it is one of those fibres that bloom after washing to set the twist. I spun over 2nd and 3rd August 2026, achieving 58g/213m of yarn that is not too dissimilar to Jacob wool or any of the "down" breed wools.

I started knitting on 16th August and finished on 24th August, only working on it a little at a time because I was working in the garden again.

Roslagsfår - Sweden

Roslagsfår are a breed of endangered landrace sheep from Sweden that are kept on the islands north of Stockholm.  They were once widely kept for their wool but in 1995 there were only about 40 animals left.  They were rediscovered when Nils Dahlbeck and Lars Englund were travelling around Sweden looking for coloured rya sheep and horned rams.

They used to kept on almost every farm in Roslagen, being kept on summer pastures on the islets in the archipelago. During the 20th century the Roslagsfår were replaced with more productive breeds and they almost became extinct, with the only remaining herd belonging to Maj and Henry Jansson on Raggarön in norther Roslagen.  The sheep on this farm has been mentioned in farming documents since the 18th century.  Maj and Henry saved all of the ram lambs and kept them together with the ewes until winter, when all the ram lambs were slaughtered after mating, so called "group mating".  The Roslags sheep have been preserved in the gene bank of the Swedish Farm Sheep Association since 1997.

Roslags are small, slender sheep with slender legs and are Sweden's smallest sheep.  Rams weigh about 50kg and stand about 57cm at the withers and ewes weight about 35kg-40kg and stand about 54cm at the withers.  The ewes can lamb all year round, usually having a single lamb, sometimes twins.  Triplets are extremely rare.  The Roslags exhibit the highest within-population inbreeding due to the low number of the breed and the breeding method once used.  A contemporary estimated number of the population of Roslag sheep by Nordisk GenBank Husdyr is 496 individuals over a number of flocks.

The interests of individuals breeding Roslag sheep are represented by The Swedish Peasant Sheep Association and they are responsible for the breed's conservation. Some owners of Roslag Sheep are members of the Swedish Sheep Breeders' Association and follow the breeding plan for the breed as determined by the Swedish National Boar of  Agriculture and the sheep holders may be entitled to environmental subsidies for the conservation of endangered breeds.

Most of the sheep, about 90% of them, are white or ivory and the rest are either black with larger or smaller white markings or black and white spotted.  Lambs can be born reddish brown or reddish brown spotted but this colour fades to creamy white as the wool grows.  Rams have horns that are usually large and white whilst the ewes are polled.  They are hardy and easily become affectionate and tame.  They are agile and are good grazers on grass.  They are easy to handle and move due to their small size.  The tail and face are not usually covered in wool, although the tails can be covered in wool in some animals.

The wool is of the rya type, with long straight or curly outer hairs and undercoat.  The wool is of varying quality and is less suitable for felting as it does not shrink but retains its original structure so felting was not so common in the past.  People used to spin the wool and weave with it or they knitted and needle-stitched with it, making anything from socks, mittens and other clothing and even sailcloth.  The Upplands Museum has had old "Uppland wear" examined and has concluded that they were made of wool, the equivalent of which today is only found in the Roslag breed.

The fleece are double coated and of varying quality that may include lots of kemp and they can be up to 15 inches (38cm) long.

I bought this breed in as 108g of unwashed raw fleece that was part of a sample pack that featured 8 different Swedish breeds that I purchased back in early May 2022 from a lady called Anita Grahn based in Uppsala, Sweden. Her shop has been empty since October 2024, when she was in hospital, and her online shop is still empty. I do hope she is OK, but I fear the worst.  However, I can provide a link to Swedish Fibre, a small business run by Sandy Zetterlund who has a passion for knitting, wool, spinning and now a passion for bringing these beautiful fleece from these rare conservation sheep kept by small farmers into the limelight and put them in front of similarly passionate hand spinners like myself who care about ensuring the future and continuation of these rare and unique breeds.  The demand for and sale of the fleece from these rare breeds really do help the survival of the breed.  

Raw unwashed fleece

I washed the fleece on 27th May 2002 and the water turned not so much dirty as milky, obviously quite a lot of lanolin/grease, in the undercoat most likely, but hasn't it washed up white!  Once dry it weighed 83g.

Washed fleece

I combed it on 4th July 2022 and I have 58g of lustrous hand combed top to spin that is quite reminiscent of an English Longwool in texture, softness and the amount of lustre.

I spun this on 1st August - 2nd August 2026. I found it to be an interesting spin. It is not soft but it is nice to spin. I tried to pre-draft it prior to spinning but it just kept falling apart. I seemed to have a fair amount of very short fibres in some of my fibre nests.

The finished yarn has a slight sheen to it and is 54g/137m. It is quite prickly and not for next-to-skin. I knit the project piece 15th-16th August 2026.

Helsingefår - Sweden

Helsingefår are one strain of several Swedish breeds referred to as "forest sheep", each of which is geographically and genetically unique and very rare.  They originate from two different groups of sheep with similar geographical origins, characteristics, and appearance.  

In the summer of 1987 a farmer called Gun-Marie Swessar purchased the last sheep from the Olander brothers in Mållångstuga outside Alfta and the sheep were of the type that their mother had always had. 

In the early 1990s these sheep were noticed by Lars Englund, who was travelling around the country looking for coloured rye sheep and Lars contacted Nils Dahlbeck, who was working on the "Horngumse" project searching for original Nordic sheep with horn-bearing rams, as the rams in the flock had "old-fashioned" horns with flattened horn tips.

In 1994, Mats Olsson purchased a group of sheep from Fredrik Lindblom in the village of Borgsjö, Medelpad, that he had kept for 40 years  These sheep had a great variety of colours, were of an older type with short ears and short tails, and some of them had so-called "kläppar-skillings" or "skillingar" on the upper part of the neck, and these skillings are small teat like growths under the chin on the neck and may be a sign of older origins as old texts make reference to sheep in Sweden in the 19th century having skillings.

Later that autumn, a black ram with "stately horns" was taken from Gun-Marie Swessar's farm, with the help of Nils Dahlbeck, to breed with the ewes that Mats Olsson purchased. The following year, some ewes were sold to Gene Fornby outside Örnsköldsvik, and in February 2003 the remaining sheep at Gene Fornby were added to the Helsinge sheep gene bank.

The Helsinge sheep has been preserved in the gene bank of the Swedish Farm Sheep Association since  1999 and are a conservation breed with 1060 breeding ewes as of 2021. They used to be the common sheep in the province of Hälsingland in north-east central Sweden.  Helsinge sheep are often very friendly and affectionate towards their owners but can be a little wary of strangers.  They prefer to graze in pastures with trees rather than pastures with just grass

Helsinge sheep vary in type but are often quite robust and older ewes often have large, rough heads.  Ewes weigh about 40-60kg, and Rams weigh about 50-70kg and stand about 74cm at the withers; ewes weigh about 40-60kg and stand about 66cm at the withers. Ewes are good mothers and can lamb year-round.  Young ewes usually have one lamb while older ewes usually have two lambs but triplets occur and rarely even quads.

Sheep vary greatly in colour and markings.  Most are black, which often fades over the years, but grey, brown, brindle and almost completely white animals also occur.  Sheep with more than one colour are common. Blaze or panda markings are common, as well as other facial markings such as flour mole, ewe spots and badger markings.  Ewes are polled, and rams are usually beautifully horned but may be polled.  Scurrs or small horns may occur.  The tails are usually short and often free of wool but can also have longer curly wool.  The rams often have coarser mane hair on the neck and shoulders, and this can sometimes occur on ewes.

The fleece is double-coated, made up of medium and long wool types and sometimes finer wool.  The wool is very variable and is excellent for spinning and felting.  It can be similar to fine wool but is usually of the rya type or tapestry.  There can also be different types of wool on the same sheep.  Fibre diameters vary so much that there isn't much point quoting micron counts.

I bought this breed in as 103g of unwashed raw fleece that was part of a sample pack that featured 8 different Swedish breeds that I purchased back in early May 2022 from a lady called Anita Grahn based in Uppsala, Sweden.  I was going to add a link for Anita and her shop but when I looked her last social media post was in October of 2024 stating that she was in hospital and she has not posted anything since and her online shop is empty as of August 2026. I do hope she is OK.  However, I can provide a link to Swedish Fibre, a small business run by Sandy Zetterlund who has a passion for knitting, wool, spinning and now a passion for bringing these beautiful fleece from these rare conservation sheep kept by small farmers into the limelight and put them in front of similarly passionate hand spinners like myself who care about ensuring the future and continuation of these rare and unique breeds.  The demand for and sale of the fleece from these rare breeds really do help the survival of the breed.  

I washed this on 29th May 2022, and the water turned quite brown.  Although it has guard hairs, it still feels reasonably soft.  After drying, it weighed 77g.

I combed it on 17th December 2022 and was left with 57g of prepared fibre for spinning.  The longest fibres are black, and the shortest are white, so when I dizzed this off the hand combs, it pulled off like a gradient. I put the two ends together and wound them into nests, and I will have to spin with the two ends held at the same time to mix the fibres back together.

Fast forward to 31st July 2026 and I finally get around to start spinning this fibre. I found it really tricky to spin because when it made a kind of gradient, that was actually the different fibre types separating, and that wasn't really a good thing to have happen. Ensuring both fibre types were spun together wasn't easy, although for the most part I did manage to get it to happen.

I finished spinning it on 1st August 2026, achieving a yarn that was 54g/158m and quite prickly but soft at the same time and definitely not for next-to-skin items. I knit the piece for my project over 10th-14th August, as I had a few things to do in the garden as we are in the process of giving it a huge makeover.