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.