Blending the Llanwenog

About 10 days ago I wrote a post about combing the rust/brick red Llanwenog fleece and said that I need to figure out what I want to blend with it to make it more interesting.  I have a few purchased braids of fibre of a similar main colour that have been blended with yellows or greens and I wanted something a little different.  The list of blend ingredients is quite large.

Top row: Llanwenog, 4g of Trilobal Nylon in shade "Sun".  
Bottom row: 5g of goodie bag blend, 31g Ceilidh in shade "Beltane"

Top row: 5g of goodie bag blend, 8g of Rose Quartz gradient pack sample.  
Bottom row: 4g Tussah Silk in shade "Saffron", 12g of 23 micron Merino in shade "Denim"

Top row: 2g of silk noil in shade "Colbalt", 4g of 70/30 Merino/Silk blend in shade "Soft Fruit"
Bottom row: 3g of Merino in shade "Red", 3g of silk in a fruity shade.

The result of all this fluff blended together on my blending hackle and dizzed off then braided is...

I'm not 100% happy, it's not quite as I had hoped but let's see how it spins up.

Badger Face Welsh Mountain - Torwen

This breed, the Badger Face Welsh Mountain - Torwen, has long been considered to be the reverse colourway of the Torddu that I blogged about last week and in the books that I have the two breeds are clumped together as one and that is not the case.  They are similar, come from the same place and they may well have common ancestors but they are two separate breeds and not just the same breed but different colours.

Top: A ewe and a lamb
Bottom: Ewes and a ram

The Badger Face Welsh Mountain Sheep, according to the British Wool Marketing Board, was established in the UK during the 1st century but they don't specify which one they are referring to.  This post is specifically about the Torwen and it is easy to see how it may be presumed that they are the same but in different colours but if you look closely the white stripe above the eye is not as pronounced and in a different position to the Torddu.  They also have white under the chin but then it seems to stop there and there is not a definite stripe down the breast as there is in the Torddu.  It does definitely have a white belly though and the rest of the fleece is dark brown to black.

At the time of writing, the Badger Face Welsh Mountain - Torwen, also known as the Torwen Badgerface Welsh is in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust category 5: Minority (1500-3000) registered breeding ewes and so there are far less of the Torwen as there are of the Torddu.

They are usually found in mid-wales but there are small specialist flocks in other parts of the UK too.

Because they are primarily raised for meat, the fleece is usually secondary and most often little attention is given to it.  Kemp may be present and many take this as a theoretical indicator to the hardiness of the sheep whilst others find it undesirable.  Generally the fleece weigh 1.5 to 2kg with a 3-4 inch (7-10cm) staple length, I presume this is for both breeds from what I can find out.

Because the quality of the fleece can be so varied I will not comment generally on how best to prepare the fleece because that really does depend on what type of fleece you have and how much work you want to put in in preparing it and what type of yarn you hope to get from it.  It is not a fleece that should be prepared by the inexperienced, that is for sure! 

I have bought this breed in as 100g of pre-washed fleece, presuming that this would be enough but it was so awful that I didn't get enough combed top from it and so purchased a second lot of 100g.  It felt really yakky to the touch, still felt greasy and coarse and just really really nasty.  Once my combs had done their magic in removing all the yakky stuff I was left with 62g of really nice soft downy wool, softer than the white Torddu.

My finished yarn is of soft quality to the touch of the hand.  My knitted piece for the project only took 31g/77m so I have a small amount left to do whatever with.

Blending the Suri Alpaca and Merino

I can't believe it has been a whole year since I combed the Suri alpaca and made a kind of a gradient with it.  I bought the merino I intended to buy to blend with it ages ago now but just procrastinated about it ever since but today is the day that I put my big girly pants on and deal with it.

The plan is to blend an equal amount of merino, made up of however many colours and blends of colours necessary to make it work, with an equal amount of Suri alpaca.  I will be making a 2-ply yarn so everything needs to be split into two equal amounts as well.  I will be using my trusty strong cardboard tube (was previously the inner off a large roll of Christmas wrapping paper, potentially a 25m roll which would need a sturdy inner, as opposed to a smaller 5m roll which usually just has a thin piece of card rolled in with the paper towards the centre of the roll).  I have made "stop ends" and a centre divider for roll by cutting large circles from a cardboard box and making a hole in the middle.  The fibre for each ply should fit on either side of the centre divider.

Using my trust blending hackle I started by taking the darkest alpaca fibre and the darkest of the merino and blending them.  The next one was a mix of the darkest alpaca fibre, the darkest merino and the next lighter shade of the merino.  I made my way through the alpaca and the merino, matching the colours/shades as best as I could, using a blend of 4 shades to where necessary to make a smoother transition on the gradient.

Top row: Merino shades Pearl and Chocolate.  Middle row: Merino shades Mink and Amber. 
Bottom row: The Suri Alpaca gradient and Merino shade Hazelnut

It took me a few hours of figuring out, deciding what to do, weighing out, a few "don't touch that", "don't move that" to the family, blending and dizzing off but I got there in the end.

There was one fibre nest on each side that I thought stood out a little too much from the others, maybe I put a little too much amber Merino in them, it seemed quite "yellow" compared to the others, but on examination its just that its not quite as blended in so should resolve at the spinning process.  Fingers crossed.

Badger Face Welsh Mountain Sheep - Torddu

The Badger Face Welsh Mountain Sheep, hmmm yes, there are, in fact, two different breeds, the Torddu (black belly) and the Torwen (white belly) and yet in the books that I have about sheep breeds and their fleece the two are always clumped together and talked about as if they are just different colours of the same breed.  From information provided by the farmer from whom I got my fleece and who answered my question about breeding and colour inheritance they are not the same breed and have to be bred Torddu to Torddu and Torwen to Torwen.  The fact that they are separate breeds has now been recognised by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust who have now separated out the numbers of each breed and they are in two different categories.  I will do my best to try and separate out the information about each of the breeds which are usually talked about as one breed and I am writing two separate posts about them.

The Badger Face Welsh Mountain Sheep, according to the British Wool Marketing Board, was established in the UK during the 1st century but they don't specify which one they are referring to.  This post is specifically about the Torddu, which is pronounced Tor-thee, and this is a predominantly white sheep with black markings.  Only the rams have horns.  It has black stripes above the eyes and a black stripe running from the chin, down its front, under the belly and all the way to the tail.  The rest of the fleece is usually white but can be grey or light brown.

At the time of writing, the Badger Face Welsh Mountain - Torddu, also known as the Torddu Badgerface Welsh is in the "Other UK Native Breeds" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, which means there are over 3000 registered breeding ewes of this breed.

They are usually found in mid-wales but there are small specialist flocks in other parts of the UK too.

Because they are primarily raised for meat, the fleece is usually secondary and most often little attention is given to it.  Kemp may be present and many take this as a theoretical indicator to the hardiness of the sheep whilst others find it undesirable.  Generally the fleece weigh 1.5 to 2kg with a 3-4 inch (7-10cm) staple length, I presume this is for both breeds from what I can find out.

Because the quality of the fleece can be so varied I will not comment generally on how best to prepare the fleece because that really does depend on what type of fleece you have and how much work you want to put in in preparing it and what type of yarn you hope to get from it.  It is not a fleece that should be prepared by the inexperienced, that is for sure! 

I originally bought this breed in as a 50g bag of washed fleece, it was all that the seller had left so I could only get one bag, and once I had combed it and got 25g of hand combed top I realised there was probably nowhere near enough for the project so that has been left to one side and then I have bought this breed in as a full fleece from a farm in Okehampton, Devon, that specialises in keeping and raising a handful of different rare breeds of sheep, both Badger Face Welsh Mountain - Torddu and Torwen, Whiteface Dartmoor and Herdwick.  They also raise Red Ruby Devon cattle, Berkshire Pigs, Aylesbury and Shetland Ducks, Black Orpington chickens and Pilgrim Geese.

My fleece came in at just over 1.5kg, including the bag it was wrapped in and I removed a few bits, like the small amount of black belly fibres and I have 1400g to sort further and wash.  It's very kempy and has an area of dark, almost grey fibres and several "marked" areas and I have pulled these areas off and have washed them separately to the rest of the fleece.

Shows the variety of fleece type within the same fleece

And a close up of those two different types

Now that it's dry the weight is down to 913g. So, how will I handle this?  Quite simply, my usual method of preparation, my Valkyrie Extrafine Wool Combs.  There is kemp of pretty much every colour imaginable in this fleece along with some coarse hair but I can also see some very fine wool.  Its the fine wool that I am after. 

These 4 photos are of the same small amount of fleece, first on the combs, then what was removed, the same fleece combed and then once I had dizzed it off the combs

So, now that it is all combed I have 199g of nice clean white hand combed top and 67g of nice clean but colourful top.  The colourful top and the original 25g of hand combed top will have to be dyed and used together in another project.

My finished yarn is really nice and soft to the touch of the hand and is a nice white and I have a total of 197g/512m of sport weight.  My knitted piece for the project took 31g/79m so I have a nice amount left to do whatever I want with.

Combing the last of the Llanwenog

It's been well over 2 years, nearly 3 in fact, since I dyed the Llanwenog fleece and I have finally gotten around to combing the rust coloured part.  It has taken me a couple of days to get through the bag full of dyed fleece but I now have 216g of hand combed fibre.  I plan to now figure out what I want to blend with it to jazz it up a bit, as its not a particularly pretty colour.

Greyface Dartmoor Sheep

The Greyface Dartmoor, one of the English Longwool breeds of sheep, was developed and lives on Dartmoor, a National Park in Devon in the Southwest of England.  They are one of two breeds of sheep who live there, the other being the Whiteface Dartmoor.  Whilst they are similar in many ways, they are two completely different breeds of sheep.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 17th century.

The Greyface Dartmoor sheep, at the time of writing, is in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust Category 5: Minority (1500-3000) registered breeding ewes.  

They are a relatively old breed, developed in the 1800's by combining Leicester Longwool, Lincoln Longwool and the now-extinct Notts with possibly some Cheviot and Southdown bloodlines.  The name of Greyface actually refers to the greyish-black mottled colour around their noses.  

The Greyface Dartmoor is a small-medium build sheep with a whiteface that is spotted or mottled, greyish-black nose and neither sexes have horns.  The face is fringed with white wool. 

They produce a good size fleece that weighs 5.5 to 8kg in weight and can be up to as much as 15kg for a large ram.  The staple length can be anything from 6 inches up to about 12 inches long (15-30cm). The fleece is long, strong, curly and lustrous but if you're looking for softness, turn around and run a mile because softness does not belong on a sheep that lives in some of the harshest and most extreme weather conditions of the UK. 

This fleece can be picked and flicked or combed but make sure you tease the locks apart and open before you mount them onto the combs and do not overload the combs.  You will need to take very long strokes and keep your hands very far apart due to sheer length of the staples.  The fibres are so long and coarse that if you tug too hard on them you can actually cut your hands on it.  Its very slippery too and will both clump and drift apart if you cling to it.

Yarns spun from Greyface Dartmoor fleece are definitely suited to hardwearing textiles such as blankets, rugs and carpets.  The locks can be used unspun but woven into a rug too to make a fleece style rug.

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared roving and it is definitely very coarse, as you can see from the photos.

My finished yarn or maybe I should call it rope is of coarse quality to the touch of the hand and you can see and feel the prickly hair sticking out all over the place and I have 91g/155m.  My knitted piece for the project took 42g/72m and what I have left I will use as garden twine.  To knit with it was really awkward and very uncomfortable on the hands and as you can see, there is very little stitch definition.