Dalesbred Sheep

The Dalesbred sheep was developed in the 20th century by crossing Swaledales and Scottish Blackface breeds.

The Dalesbred sheep, at the time of writing, is in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust category 6: "Other UK Native Breeds" (over 3000) registered breeding ewes.   They are usually found in the Pennines across Lancashire and Yorkshire and 95% of the breed is confined to that relatively small area of the UK which poses a risk to the breed should there ever be another outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease.  They are well known in the English Lake District, along with Swaledale, Rough Fell and Herdwick breeds of sheep and are noted for their ability to thrive in exposed locations.  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.

The Dalesbred has a blackface that is free from wool and has distinctive white marks above and to each side of the nostrils and a grey nose.  The legs are black and white and free from wool. Both sexes have horns, with the rams having spiral horns and ewes having much smaller horns.  

They produce a medium sized dual coated fleece of 1.5-3kg with a staple that is 5-8 inches (12.5-20.75cm) that contains hair that protects them from the rain and an undercoat that is softer and keeps them warm.  The fleece should be white but often contains black and grey fibres too.   

This fleece can be spun from teased locks, it can be carded but this is not easy with this fleece or it can be combed. Combing will separate the longer, coarser, hairy fibres from the shorter, finer, softer undercoat but it might not do this cleanly due to overlapping lengths of both types of fibres.   Should take dye well.

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

I have bought this breed in as a 100g bag of pre-washed fleece that just needs to be prepared and spun.  My sample is a mix of both white and the darker fibres but this could make an interesting yarn.

Combing left me with just 48g of hand combed top in an array of interesting shades as I removed as much of the coarse hair as I could whilst still leaving me enough to knit the sampler.  The darker fibres were much shorter than the lighter fibres so that when I dizzed this off my combs the lighter fibres came off first and the darkest fibres last so that each hand combed nest was a kind of "mini-gradient" in itself.  I decided that it would be pointless to try and blend this into one shade using my blending hackle and instead chose to spin creatively.

I divided the nests into two piles and spun the first single by spinning each nest from lightest to darkest fibres and then when I spun the second single I reversed it and spun each nest from darkest to lightest.  I figured that this way, when I plied them together, the colours would kind of barber-pole throughout the yarn and this would give the yarn a more overall even shade rather than have defined light and dark stripes or patches.

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand and actually feels softer than the Exmoor Horn I just spun but you can feel the prickly hair and I do like the colour which is a pale beige-y pale grey. I have 48g/87m of sport weight yarn.  My knitted piece for the project took 27g/49m so I have some left to do whatever with.  It has knitted up a little bit stripey and its not an even colour all over, but I am not surprised in all honesty.