Zwartbles - The Netherlands

The Zwartbles was developed in the early 19th century in Friesland by crossing the Friesland milk sheep (a short-tailed polled sheep) and the Schoonebeker (horns and hairy) to graze behind a dairy herd.  The name means "black with a white blaze".  A naturally tame and gentle milking sheep they are traditionally used for milk and meat with the wool being an afterthought.  There numbers declined in The Netherlands to about 500 with only about half of them being considered as purebred until the Dutch Rare Breed Survival Trust listed them as critically rare in the mid-1970s.  Most were living on just 6 farms at the time and they started a flock book in 1985 as the numbers had increased once again, in part due to the interest of the black wool with hand spinners.

Tall with a long body, completely black with a white blaze from the top of the head to the nose, two white socks on the back legs and a white tip on the tail.  The medium-fine wool shades through brown to black.  A UK breed society was formed in 1995 after the breed was first imported in the early 1990s and it was only after that that the fibre was made available.  In 2011 there were over 750 Zwartble flocks registered with the UK breed society

Zwartbles are quite large with rams weighing 100kg and ewes 85kg.  Fleece weigh 3kg-4.5kg with a staple length of 4 -6 inches (10-15cm) and fibre diameters of 28-34 microns.  The fleece is dense so any sun-bleaching to the tips will not travel far into the length of the staple.  The wool is medium to fine with excellent crimp and is very dark and probably one of the blackest black fleeces available in the UK.  Its not really worth trying to dye fleece from this breed, unless you have an amount of white or silvery fibres in the fleece and you are dying it black.  Because of the amount of crimp, yarns will be bouncy and make cosy items. Yarn produced is definitely for more durable items than luxury items, so hats, gloves, cardigans and household textiles as the crispness will emphasize stitch definition.  

I brought this breed in as 100g of commercially produced top from John Arbon Textiles in July 2022.

I spun both singles and plied them over two days, 13th and 14th June 2025, spinning a bit finer than my first attempt with spinning this breed, which went way off course in terms of final yarn weight produced and ended up as a Double Knit.  This time I managed to achieve a yarn that is around 14wpi, fingering weight yarn, and close enough to be used in my project at 103g/392m.

I'm not sure of the actual date that I finished knitting up the panel, as I have been ill with this new type of flu/Covid variant that has been going around. It has hit me for six and knocked me off my feet but I am still trying to carry on and at least do something towards my project, even if it takes me 3 times as long to do anything.

I doubt that you can read what this says but it does actually say Zwartbles on the top with a line underneath it and The Netherlands underneath that.  I have tried and tried to get the wording to show up on photographs but it just refuses.