Lleyn Sheep

The Lleyn Sheep (or Llŷn) was developed in north-west Wales in the early 1800's when it is believed that rams from the now extinct Irish longwool breed called Roscommon, named after Lord Roscommon, were bred with native Welsh Mountain ewes on the Lleyn Peninsula.  In 1810 Border Leicester bloodlines were added into the mix to produce the breed we know today as Lleyn.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 19th century.

The Lleyn Peninsular, outlined in red

The Lleyn is a medium sized sheep with a white face, white head and a black nose.  The ears and legs below the hock are free of wool.  Neither sexes grow horns.  They are very popular as a commercial breeding ewe now and can be found all over the UK but in the 1960's there were just 10 flocks in existence so the owners formed a breed society in 1970 and began promoting the breed and, at the time of writing, the breed has recently progressed from the Rare Breeds Survival Trust category 5: Minority (1500-3000 breeding ewes) and into category 6: Over 3,000 registered breeding ewes.

They produce a kemp free medium size fleece of 2-3kg that is a creamy white and quite matte with a staple length of 3-5 inches for the most part but coarser parts of the fleece can be longer.   

This fleece is best spun by flicking or combing the locks and spinning it worsted style to minimise any hairiness although if you separate the coarsest and hairiest parts of the fleece out I'm sure you could prepare and spin it anyway you like.  The nicest parts of the fleece has nice bounce qualities and can be used for everyday knitted garments.  The hairy parts would be good for household textiles that need to stand up to rough treatment.  If you want to dye it it does take dye well, with a touch of muted lustre.  

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared roving, which is really nice and clean this time.

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand and and is a warm creamy white and is 50g/166m of sport weight.  My knitted piece for the project only took 8g/26.5m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Soay Sheep

The Soay Sheep is another breed from the St Kilda archipelago, especially the island of Soay and also the island of Hirta and the breed's story is closely linked to that of the Boreray Sheep, as a breed also having being raised by the St Kildan population.

The Soay, pronounced "So-ay" and means Sheep Island in Norse, is a small, lean and very hardy sheep and is the most primitive of the breeds in the United Kingdom.  There is no wool on the face or legs, the face is dark with lighter makers over the eyes and muzzle.  The fleece sheds naturally every year and is usually a medium to dark brown but much lighter shades can be found up to light tan and then right down the other end of the scale to such a dark brown that it is almost black.  The St Kildans would collect the naturally shed wool once a year. In the early years of the 20th century, the lord who owned the islands at that time took small number of Soay sheep and gave some to his aristocratic friends for their estates and parklands, who then bred them as ornamental sheep and for their mouflon colour.

In 1932, after the evacuation of the residents of Hirta, a group of St Kildan men were sent back to the island of Soay to capture a flock of 107 Soay Sheep and move them to Hirta to expand the population and control the vegetation now growing on the abandoned island after the St Kildans took their own sheep with them when they evacuated.  After The National Trust took over the islands in 1956 scientists were allowed to study the breed and brought some over to mainland UK for study and breeding.  Today on Hirta there is a small number of seasonal staff that work for The National Trust and the island can only be visited through volunteer work programs.

They are, at the time of writing, in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust category 4: At risk (900-1500 registered breeding ewes).  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 1st century.

They produce a small size fleece of up to about 1kg that can vary from very fine to very coarse and hairy or kempy.  The staple length is between 1.5 and 4 inches long (3.8-10 cm long).  Ram fleece are often more coarser than ewe fleece.

Locks are blocky and indistinct with slightly pointed tips.  Sometimes they are double coated and other times they're not.  For spinning, you can spin from gently opened locks or card the locks but there is generally a lot of skin flakes that is difficult to remove and so mini combs is the best way to remove most of that.

Use of the yarns spun from Soay depends on the quality of the fleece and traditionally the St Kildans used the finest fibres to make underwear with the rest being used to make tweedy fabric. 

I bought this in as pre-prepared de-haired roving but there was quite a lot of long coarse white hairs which I removed before and during spinning.  It was also full of black hairs and black kemp which mostly dropped out during spinning and plying and then more dropped out when I skeined it up, snapped it, shook it out, washed it, shook it some more.  The more I shook it out the more kemp dropped out and the softer and softer the skein felt.

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand and you can feel the prickly kemp that is still in there and is 44g/138m of sport weight, so I lost about 6g worth of kemp with all the shaking out.  It's not as soft as the Boreray but it's a reasonable yarn.  My knitted piece for the project only took 8g/25m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Boreray Sheep

The Boreray Sheep are a very small breed of primitive short tailed sheep that is descended from the now extinct Scottish Tan Face mixed with Hebridean Blackface bloodlines.  The females have horns that are thinner than the males and are curved.  Rams grow horns that are especially large and they spiral beyond 360°.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 19th century.   

The history of the breed is quite interesting and very complex.  They are from St Kilda, which is a group of four small islands called Hirta, Boreray, Soay and Dùn, and a number of sea stacks that are about 112 miles west of Mainland Scotland. The islands are thought to have been permanently occupied about 2,000 years ago, although there is evidence of Bronze Age occupation dating back to over 4,000 years ago.  

Due to the location of the islands any population would rely on sheep and fishing for their livelihood with spinning of wool done by the women and weaving done by the men and used the wool from all of the sheep, both feral and domesticated, and all from all breeds within the small group of islands.  The population peaked at just under 200 on Hirta in the 1600's with just 36 inhabitants left by 1930. The Islands were evacuated in 1930 after they all almost died from starvation following a particularly hard winter and they relocated elsewhere. The St Kildan's never owned the land on which they lived and worked for a non-resident lord and ownership changed many times, usually between the MacLeods and MacDonalds of Skye.  After the evacuation ownership was in the hands of Lord Dumfries, the fifth Marquess of Bute until his death in 1956, when ownership transferred to the National Trust for Scotland.

Whilst their sheep and cattle were ferried off Hirta they had kept a second flock of domestic sheep on Boreray as a backup in case anything untoward happened to their main flock.  A group of inhabitants would visit once a year to collect the fleece but the trip was dangerous and a group had been stranded on the island for the entire winter one year.  In the last few years before they were evacuated there were not enough able-bodied men to make the trip and so the sheep on Boreray returned to being wild and feral.  Descendants of those sheep are still there today. 

In the 1970's half a dozen sheep were removed from the island as part of a conservation effort to protect their bloodlines and there are now a few small flocks of Boreray Sheep in other areas of Britain.  In 1999 there was an estimate of just 74 ewes and 10 rams and by 2012 there was 204 ewes registered with The Rare Breeds Survival Trust and the numbers have been increasing year on year and in 2017 they were moved from Category 2: Critical to Category 3: Vulnerable (500-900 breeding ewes), where they remain as of the time of writing.

The fleece are small, usually 900-1600g and is usually creamy white or tan, with a small proportion being grey or dark brown and lambs can be born completely black or with large patches of black and whilst they do occasionally stay that colour they usually change to cream or tan.  Sometimes they have dark rump patches and dark collar, particularly rams.  They shed their fleece naturally, usually by July, although some shearing may be necessary in older sheep who do not moult their fleece as easily as younger individuals.  The fleece can vary greatly with some having a fine undercoat and others having long hair like fibres and everything in between.  The staple length can range between 2 and 6 inches.

 

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared roving which was sourced from a Rare Breeds Survival Trust breeder and my purchase helps to maintain the rare breed sheep.  

There was lots of little bits of vegetable matter in the roving, which I removed before or during spinning, which was a challenge due to the shortness of the staple but its very soft and I am very happy with the results.  My finished yarn is 43g/155m of sport weight yarn.

 My knitted piece for the project only took 8g/29m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Jacob Sheep

Jacob Sheep has got to be the fleece that I am most familiar with.  I have prepared and spun countless fleece of this breed over the years.  In fact, it was the first breed of sheep fleece that I bought when I was learning to spin.

The Jacob sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "Other UK Native Breeds" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there are over 3000 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society.

A little over a year ago we went on a family visit to Charlcote Park, Warwickshire.  In the gatehouse is a display that claims that their ancestor, George Lucy, introduced the first ever flock of Jacob sheep to England in 1756.  I wrote about that visit in this post here.  This is most likely true as that is just a few years before these sheep became popular with landed gentry who owned large estates and used them as ornamental sheep.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 17th century.

Their true origins are not known for definite but there has long been speculation that they are related to the sheep mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible .  According to the Book of Genesis 30:31-43. Jacob took every speckled and spotted sheep from Laban's flock, his father-in-law, as payment for his work and bred them.  In a dream God told him to use only spotted rams for breeding and soon every sheep in the flock was spotted.  The sheep, previously just known as piebald sheep, was given the name of Jacob sometime during the 20th century.  

A study in 2009 found the Jacob to be more closely linked to sheep from Africa and South-west Asia than to British breeds, although all domestic breeds can be traced back to an origin within "the Fertile Crescent", an area in the Middle-East spanning Iraq, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, north Kuwait, south Turkey, western Iran, northern Egypt and Cyprus.  Many of the sheep were piebald in nature and a sheep expert at the Israeli Agriculture Ministry has been quoted as saying that British Jacob was not indigenous to ancient Israel and the sheep's resemblance to that described in the Bible is just a coincidence and that "Jacob Sheep are related to Jacob the same was the American Indians are related to India".  

They have been bred in England for more than 350 years and are well documented here and it is accepted that they are a British Breed.  Jacob sheep were first introduced to North America in the early-20th Century and due to selective breeding differences there are now significant differences between North American Jacob and British Jacob sheep.  I am only interested in the British Jacob and this is what I will be writing about.

The Jacob is a small build sheep with a badgerface, black muzzle and cheeks and a white blaze. The legs are free of wool below the knees and the head is free of wool forward of the horns and on the cheeks. They are polycerate, which means they can have two, four or six horns and this is in both sexes, although the males horns tend to be larger and more impressive.  Most British Jacob sheep have just two horns but there are some that have more. It is a piebald breed with fleece that ranges from cream and brown to almost black and is very similar in texture and handle to Down's breed of sheep. 

The fleece quality varies from fine to coarse and some fleece include kemp.  None of the raw fleece that I have ever had, and I've had quite a lot, have ever had any kemp in them.  They produce a fleece that generally weighs between 1.5kg and 2.75kg that has a soft to medium handle with a staple length of  between 3 and 6 inches long (7.5-18 cm long) and is usually 32-34 microns.  It is light, soft, springy and open and there is usually a difference in the length of the staples of the different colours within the same fleece and I have written about this in the past.

This fleece can be carded or combed using Viking combs.  How you handle the different colours is entirely at the spinners discretion.  You can separate them out and spin just black/brown and just white/cream or you can blend them together to produce a whole range of shades of grey, depending on how much of each colour you blend.  In the past I have produced natural coloured gradient yarns by varying the amount of each colour that is blended together.  Even if you do choose to spin the black/brown and white/cream separately it is inevitable that there will be an amount of fleece that you cannot separate totally and will make a grey or multi-coloured yarn from this anyway.  Also, don't be fooled into thinking that you cannot dye the dark parts of the fleece.  I have done this several times.  On the darkest parts you will need strong dark colours but you can achieve navy blue, dark green and dark red for examples.  You can also dye the grey in an array of colours with the blackest of the fibres showing through to produce marled yarns which can be very striking.

Yarns spun from Jacob fleece can be used for a whole variety of items and this will depend on the quality of the fleece that you spin from, which varies too greatly for me to say for certain what it can make.  That decision, in this case, is entirely in the creators hands. 

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared fibre in a box containing 50g each of four British Breeds and I also had a 25g sample that I got with another pack that I stretched it out to the same length as the 50g and spun them together at the same time.  It was the most coarse and just horrible Jacob wool that I have ever encountered.  It was also full of kemp, which I tried to remove as I spun and ended up having to use tweezers after I had spun it to pull out all the nasty kemp that was sticking out and I did this in short lengths, knit that bit, cleaned up another length and then knit with that and I did this until I had knitted my sampler.  Pulling the kemp out greatly improved the quality but it still wasn't as nice as when I've bought it in as fleece from local farms. If this is the standard of Jacob that retailers are selling to spinners then I finally understand why a lot of fellow spinners say that they don't like Jacob and complain about how horrible it is.  I could have spent the time combing some black Jacob fleece that I still have left from fleece I bought in a few years ago but I thought I'd use this seeing as it was just the right amount for my needs.

My finished yarn is of poor quality to the touch of the hand and you can feel the prickly kemp.  My knitted piece for the project only took 12g/28m and I threw the rest of it in the bin.

Bluefaced Leicester Sheep

The Bluefaced Leicester, or BFL for short, belongs to the English Longwool family of sheep.  The term Blue-faced is actually just an illusion as there are no blue hairs involved, just short white hair over black skin and used to be a rare trait.  The breed is a descendent of the original native (or landrace) breeds of the Leicestershire area which were improved by a carefully monitored breeding program introduced by Robert Bakewell after he took over his fathers farm in 1755.  

Gone were the days of keeping all the sheep together in a field and in came the days of keeping rams and ewes away from each other and only allowing selected rams with specific desirable traits to breed with the ewes.  The breed he developed was known as the "New Leicesters" or the "Dishley Leicesters" after the farms name of Dishley Grange.  

Robert Bakewell is also responsible for the concept of the Breed Society or Association with a set of rules to follow or abide by in order to keep breeds pure.  He died in 1795 at the age of 70 and his Dishley Leicesters died out soon after his death but the Leicester Longwool traces its lineage back to the Dishley Leicesters and Bakewell's flock. So, how do we go from Leicester Longwool to Bluefaced Leicester?  In the early 20th century breeders in Northumberland started selective breeding specifically for the Bluefaced trait and cross breed with the Teeswater breed and a new breed was born (literally!).  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 18th century.

The Bluefaced Leicester sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "Other UK Native Breeds" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there are over 3000 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society. They are also used to produce cross breed sheep.  North Country Mules are produced by using a Bluefaced Leicester ram with a ewe suited to the locality of the flock, usually one of the Blackfaced Mountain breeds and the ewes produced are then cross-bred again with rams of larger meat breeds such as Texel or Suffolk.

The Bluefaced Leicester is a medium to large build sheep with a distinctive Roman nose and the short hair is white over blue-black skin. The head, neck and legs are free of wool.  Neither sexes grow horns.

They produce a medium size fleece of between 1 and 3kg that is demi-lustrous but fine and soft. The fleece is usually white but there is a recessive gene that shows up to produce black and grey fleeces. The staple length is between 3 and 6 inches long (7.5-15 cm long) and is one of the most predictable fleeces in many aspects including micron count and fibre length.

This fleece can be challenging because the locks are so slippery, slim and springy. Unless you get a short fleece then you don't want to card this, it is best prepared by picking, combing or flicking.  This fleece dyes beautifully and clearly.  It is durable enough to wear well but fine enough to not be scratchy and there is just enough lustre to make dyes produce shimmering clear colours.  It blends well with other fibres such as silk or mohair and is often blended with other wools too

Yarns spun from Bluefaced Leicester fleece are soft enough to be worn next to skin but can take hard wear too and is good for socks, mittens, hats and jumpers as well as luxury items such as shawls and scarves.  

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared fibre in a box containing 50g each of four British Breeds and this one is a coloured variety of the breed and described as the British rival to Merino.  

Spun to Sport weight my yarn is 50g/135m

My finished yarn is of good quality to the touch of the hand and I like the colour, its more brown than grey, the photo is a little deceiving.  My knitted piece for the project only took 25g/68m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Swaledale Sheep

On with the next breed for my British Breeds project and its the turn of the Swaledale, named after the valley in which the breed originated in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.  The Swaledale belongs to the Blackfaced Mountain category of sheep.

The Swaledale sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "Other UK Native Breeds" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there are over 3000 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society and a quick search reveals that there are over 1,200 pedigree flocks of Swaledale sheep within the UK alone, so there are good numbers of these sheep around.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 20th century.  They are used to produce cross breed sheep known as Mashams and North Country Mules.  The Masham is produced by breeding a Teeswater ram (or sometimes a Wensleydale ram) to either a Dalesbred or a Swaledale ewe (and sometimes a Rough Fell ewe is used).  Ewe lambs from these crossings are then raised as breeding ewes in commercial flocks due to improved qualities.  North Country Mules are produced by using a Bluefaced Leicester ram with a ewe suited to the locality of the flock, usually one of the Blackfaced Mountain breeds and the ewes produced are then cross-bred again with rams of larger meat breeds such as Texel or Suffolk.

Swaledales are usually found in the more mountainous regions of the UK but particularly up in the Yorkshire Dales, County Durham and the pennine fells of Cumbria.  They are well known in the English Lake District, along with Dalesbred, Rough Fell and Herdwick breeds of sheep.  They are related to both the Scottish Blackface and Rough Fell and are noted for their ability to thrive in exposed locations, although the specific origins of the breed are unknown.

The Swaledale is a medium build sheep with a blackface, white muzzle and white circles around the eyes and the legs are free of wool.  Both sexes grow curled horns, although the males horns grow much larger.  Individual sheep tend to be hefted to a specific part of the mountain or fell and will remain there, often where they were born, without the need for fencing.

They produce a medium size fleece that contains hair and kemp that protects them against wet weather, along with finer wool to keep them warm. It has the largest proportion of finer wool out of the three most similar breeds, Swaledale, Herdwick and Rough Fell.  This is a breed that produces wool that is definitely not for worn next to skin wear.  The fleece is white to off-white but if you leave the kemp and dark fibres in then yarn produced will appear grey, this is what I have for my sample.  Depending on the source of information, the staple length is between 4 and 8 inches long (10-20.5 cm long) and can be anything from 1.6 to 3 kilos in weight. 

This fleece can be spun from teased locks, it can be carded or combed using Viking combs.  During combing the fibres will pull off in sequence of length as always, which means that you will first pull off the longest fibres, then the medium length and the kemp will come off last so you can spin them like that and have and everchanging yarn that may barber-pole during plying or you could take 3 lengths at a time and stagger them so you have each type of fibre in your hands at all times and thereby re-combining them as you spin as long as you keep your grip light else they will separate again.  Carding will keep the fibres mixed.

Yarns spun from Swaledale fleece are definitely suited to household items and upholstery and not for any kind of clothing except maybe a lined jacket.  

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared fibre in a box containing 50g each of four British Breeds and you can see the dark fibres and the kemp in this photo.  I also had a 25g sample that I got with another pack and the small sample was slightly different in quality so I stretched it out to the same length as the 50g and spun them together at the same time.

Spun to Sport Weight my yarn is 74g/185m

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand and you can feel the prickly hair and kemp but I do like the colour.  My knitted piece for the project only took 20g/50m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Romney Sheep

Carrying on with my British Breeds project my next breed is the Romney, named after the Romney Marshes in Kent in southeast England, on which the ancestors of this breed were introduced in Roman times.  The Romney belongs to the English Longwool category of sheep.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 13th century.

The Romney sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "Other UK Native Breeds" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there are over 3000 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society and a quick search reveals when it comes to the numbers of Romney sheep worldwide we are talking in millions, not thousands, and probably hundreds of millions as there are at least 25 million in New Zealand alone, having being introduced there in 1853 with Coopworth and Perendale breeds being developed in New Zealand by crossing other breeds with the Romneys.  These new breeds will obviously not be included in my British Breeds project.

Historically, Romney Marsh is a coastal plain in southeast England that is about a hundred square miles and much of it lies below sea level and is kept habitable by a Roman era system of drainage ditches and sea walls which were expanded in Medieval times.  The Romans bought sheep to the marshes but they suffered health problems and poor quality fleece due to the wet conditions but over centuries the sheep did slowly start to adapt.  In the 1800's Shepherds of the Marshes improved on these native sheep by introducing Leicester Longwool sheep from Robert Bakewell's flock and this then led to the Romney that we know today that grows high quality fleece even in wet conditions.

The Romney is a large sheep with a open white face and wool that grows over the legs.  The breed standard varies from country to country but here in the UK rams should have a wide broad head that is masculine in appearance and ewes should have a full face.  The back is long, wide and strong, the chest wide and the neck short and strong too. So kind of a stocky solid build, certainly not gangly.  Neither sex have horns and there should be no dark hair or kemp in an otherwise white fleece, although some coloured varieties do exist.

They produce a large dense fleece with well defined crimp and ranges from moderately coarse to fairly fine and is finer than most of the other Longwool breeds.  The finest wool can be worn next to skin but for the most part this breed it probably best being worn one layer away from the skin.  Coarser fleece are best used for outwear such as jackets and hats or household items that need durability such as rugs, chair seat pads and other soft furnishings.  Depending on the source of information, the staple length is between 4 and 8 inches long (10-20.5 cm long) and can be anything from 3.6 to over 10 kilos in weight. 

This fleece can be spun from picked or flicked locks, it can be carded or combed, made into drum-carded batts or carded rolags, its very versatile, very lustrous and takes dye really well.  This breed can be prone to "canary staining" which is a yellow colouring of the fleece caused by bacteria due to the damp or wet conditions that these sheep often survive in.  Sometimes it can affect the entire fleece, other times it will just be a section of it.  It may wash out, to an extent, but can't be washed out entirely but washing the fleece will kill the bacteria and prevent it getting any worse until you decide to either embrace the yellowing, try to overdye it or throw it away.  

Yarns spun from Romney fleece have a wide range of uses with the finer yarns being used for shawls, mittens and other clothing and the coarser yarns are more suited to household items and upholstery.  

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared fibre in a box containing 50g each of four British Breeds but I forgot to get decent photos of it before I spun it.  It was a pleasure to spin with no rubbish in it, just as well prepared spinning fibre should be.

Spun to Sport Weight I got 142m out of my 50g

My finished yarn is quite nice with some lustre.  My knitted piece for the project only took 12g/34m so I have some left to play with in the future.

Manx Loagthan Sheep

Carrying on with my British Breeds project my next breed is the Manx Loaghtan (pronounced Loch-tun) and is believed to be derived from a combination of Gaelic words, either lugh dhoan (mouse brown) or lhosht dhoan (burnt brown). Either could be true given the natural colour of this breed of sheep, a soft shade of brown that is called "moorit" and ranges from fawn to dark reddish brown.

As with most sheep, especially the coloured varieties, sunlight does tend to bleach the tips of the locks and makes the sheep look lighter in colour than the rest of the fleece.

This Manx Loaghtan has just been sheared and clearly shows a much darker colour fleece.

The Manx Loaghtan sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "At Risk" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there is between 900 and 1500 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 11th century.

Historically they are native to The Isle of Man, hence the name "Manx" and the soft brown "moorit" colour that the breed is well known for today used to be the rare colour, with white, grey and black being the dominant colours.  All that changed during a period of near extinction in the 1950's where numbers were reduced to just 43 individual sheep and now the "moorit" brown seems to be the only colour that has survived that event, although the lambs are born black and turn brown within a few weeks of birth.  There are a few small flocks of this breed outside of the Isle of Man but they are niche grazers and so the right grazing conditions need to be met in order to keep this breed.

Numbers fell by the 1950's due to the introduction of other hill breeds to the Isle of Man and despite efforts to save the breed it is not out of danger yet.  Some of these efforts have included the cancellation of the famous Isle of Man TT races (Tourist Trophy motorcycle races) in 2001, the year of a major outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth disease in the UK, which surrounds the Isle of Man but does not govern it.  Despite the fact that they had only ever previously been cancelled during WWII, since they started in 1907, and the fact that the races are very important to the economy of the self governing island bringing in approximately 40,000 visitors to the island to see the races, the islands government felt the risk to the sheep of contracting the disease from unwitting tourists was far too great to hold the event that year.  Also, in 2009, the European Union recognised the breed with a "Protected Designation of Origin" which is designed to help reconnect farmers with consumers and raise awareness of a unique product, crop or animal.

The Manx Loaghtan is a long legged, fine boned, very hardy primitive breed usually sporting 2 or 4 horns in both sexes and is one of the Northern European Short-Tailed breeds and are valued for conservation grazing as they like rough grazing such as hawthorn and coarse grasses, which then encourages native plants and wildflowers to return and studies on the Isle of Man, Ramsey Island and Bardsey Island show that there appears to be a connection between the presence of Manx Loaghtan and the ability of the Chough to survive.  As they graze and crop the vegetation it gives the birds access to surface-active and soil insects.  The dung they leave behind also attracts beetles and fly larvae which in turn are a food resource for the birds when the ground is hard or other insects are scarce.  When Manx Loaghtan numbers increase, so to Chough numbers, when they decrease the bird population also decreases.

Manx Loaghtan are a small breed of sheep with no wool on their dark face and legs.  They produce a smallish fleece that is in high demand with hand spinners.  Depending on the source of information, the staple length is between 2.5 and 5 inches long (6.5-13 cm long) and can be anything from 1.4-2.5 kilos in weight. 

This fleece can be picked and carded or you can comb if its long enough to.  Personally I go with wool combs all the way as that is my preferred choice of preparation as I prefer to spin worsted style over woollen style and I have never gotten the hang of hand carding. I really must get some proper tuition as its a little embarrassing for a hand spinner not to be able to card, if I can stand the noise of the process as I do find the noise of carding a little hard to bare.  

The Manx Loaghtan fleece can be overdyed but the base colour must be taken into account when choosing a colour.  There are two types of fleece within the breed, not on the same animal, one hairy and one woolly with the hairy one being more durable and the woolly one being much softer but it does have a good amount of bounce.  Its at its best when made into relative lightweight fabrics.  

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared fibre from a fellow spinners de-stash back in May 2020 but the fibre was produced in 2013 by a supplier that I am familiar with.  The general consensus is that fibre deteriorates with age but I personally have rarely found this to be true.  What I did find with this fibre though were lots of small clumps of "rubbish" that, in my opinion, should not have made it into the finished braid of fibre and I had to remove this as I progressed and this meant that my finished yarn was 6g lighter due to the removal of the rubbish.

Spun to Sport Weight my finished yarn is 94g/251m

My finished yarn is lovely and soft and quite bouncy and I do love the unusual shade of brown.  My knitted piece for the project only took 22g/57m, which shows the difference in density with the Cotswold which used 22g/42m.  This difference in density could be attributed to the difference in the breeds fibres or it could be attributed to the difference in my spinning, as I am human and not a regimented machine.

Cotswold Sheep

I've decided to start off with some Cotswold, as I have some of this spun up already in sport weight, so that makes sense to me to use that to make my test samples for the knitted pieces for my throw.  I wrote blog posts at the time of spinning and these can be found here and here.  Sport weight is probably a good weight of yarn to use as all the different fleece types should be able to be spun at this weight without any issues as some breeds just can't be spun too finely and others can't be spun too thickly so sport weight is a good mid-weight yarn to aim for.

This is Angelo from the award winning Pickwick Flock owned by Rob Harvey Long of Malmesbury, Wiltshire and it is yarn I produced from his fleece that I have used for my sampler.

This photo I download from the internet and it shows off the fleece nicely.

The Cotswold sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "At Risk" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there is between 900 and 1500 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society.

Historically they are a descendent of sheep introduced to the Cotswold Hills by the Romans and by the middle ages the area was known as a centre of the English wool trade but as the wool market slowed down their popularity fell and by the end of WWI just a few flocks remained and by the 1950's the numbers had fallen even further.  Numbers have since risen but and the breed is currently at a stable position but is not out of danger yet.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 13th century.

The Cotswold is a fairly large, hardy breed and is one of the English Longwool breeds with a well developed forelock of curly fleece.  They stand tall and their bodies are quite long and their face and legs are white and free from wool.  The produce a heavy, lustrous fleece that is in high demand with hand spinners.  Depending on the source of information, the staple length is between 6 and 15 inches long (15-38 cm long) and can be anything from 4-10 kilos in weight. The majority are white but black and grey can also be found, although these are rare.

You can spin this fleece straight from the locks if you like or you can flick or comb them.  Personally I go with wool combs all the way.  The locks can also be used as they are to create novelty yarns by spinning the ends in and letting the lock fall free and dangly, the same can be done in weaving.  They are also often used to make doll's wigs.  The Cotswold fleece takes dye well and the lustrousness makes the colours really shine.  Its good for heavyweight items that need to endure a lot of wear such as rugs, bags and furnishings but if you spin it fine it is wonderful for lace as it produces very good distinct stitches.  I made lace with some of Angelo's fleece and you can see photos here.

When it came to knitting up my sample for my throw, it took me 3 attempts before I was happy with the chosen alphabet style, undoing each one and reusing the yarn.  The knack is being able to read what you have knitted, if you can't make out what it says then its useless. I used an old cross stitch design programme to make the charts for knitting the words.

This is the yarn that I used.

I am sure you can read what it says

My knitted piece took just 22g/42m of yarn and I haven't washed and blocked the knitted piece yet, I want to wait until I've made a good number of them but I've pinned it out to take a photo as without the pins it just rolls up on itself.  It is a fair size so I know that the finished throw is going to be massive but I'm OK with that.

I have a crazy idea

I've had an idea for a little while now and have been buying breed sample fibre boxes when I see them come up for sale at various fibre suppliers, spreading the cost out over this past year.  I haven't got many different breeds yet but its a start.

I want to make some kind of large sampler type blanket/throw type of thing using as many different sheep breeds that I can get my hands on and each knitted piece will feature that breeds name on it somehow and all done in the sheep's natural colours, I won't be using any dyed wool in this whatsoever.  I have a mix of British and Foreign breeds at the moment but given the number of breeds available, there are 57 different British breeds alone, I think it would be wise to make two blanket/throws, one for British and one for other breeds, otherwise this thing will be huge and too big to handle.  

I need to do a bit of sample knitting to find the right alphabet that will come out in the knitting but I'm hoping that won't take too long to sort and then I can get on with it.  It will be an epic project but I don't need to do it all at once, I can fit it in between other projects.

As part of this British Sheep Breeds sampler that I want to make I will take the opportunity to write a blog post about each breed as I spin the yarn.  Some breeds I will prepare from fleece and other breeds will be bought in already prepared as either roving or top, depending on what is available as a fair amount of the breeds are rare and also the fact that I couldn't cope with having full fleeces of so many breeds, the odd one or two maybe, if I have to go that route, but I really only need enough to make each knitted piece.

Due to the fact that I no longer purchase from a particular fibre supplier I will not be buying a fibre advent calendar like I have in the previous 2 years.  I've not sourced an alternative so I will use the money saved on that to start purchasing what I need for this breeds project.