Spinning the Llanwenog brick red blend

Way, way, way back at the beginning of the year, 28th February to be exact, I created an interesting blend with some rust/brick red Llanwenog wool.  Well, the four hand-blended fibre braids have sat in a bag across the other side of the room looking at me until this week.  I've been so busy with the British Breeds project that it just got left, until now.  I did decide to make 3 larger skeins rather than 4 smaller ones so each are now 91g-94g rather than 70g or so each.

The final fibre content of this certainly won't fit on a postage stamp, it's 73% Llanwenog, 12% Merino, 5% Bluefaced Leicester, 2.5% Tussah Silk, 2% Soy Silk, 2% Shetland, 1.5% Trilobal Nylon (Firestar), 1% Silk Noil, 0.5% Alpaca, 0.5% Angelina.  It has been spun to approximately DK weight and in total there are approximately 574m so I can make something pretty decent sized with this or maybe two smaller shawls.

Llanwenog Sheep

The next breed of sheep is the Llanwenog, a welsh breed of sheep belonging to the Welsh Hill and Mountain family.  Developed in the late 1800's from the now-extinct Llanllwni (the local black-faced sheep of the western coastal counties of Wales and named for the mountain they lived on), Shropshires, Welsh Mountain and Clun Forest breeds.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 19th century.

The Llanwenog sheep, at the time of writing, is in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust Category 5: Minority (1500-3000) registered breeding ewes. They are a prolific breed raised primarily for meat and are usually found in mid-west Wales but there are specialist flocks around the UK and the breed association was formed in 1957. 

The Llanwenog is a medium build sheep with a blackface and black legs and a distinctive tuft of wool on its forehead between its short thin ears.  Neither sexes have horns

They produce a medium size white fleece of around 2 - 2.5kg and the staple length is 2 to 4.5 inches (5 to 11.5cm).  The shorter fibres in the fleece can be carded but this is a fleece that is best combed and spun worsted to show off its lustre, shine and sleek qualities.  It can be spun from opened locks.  This fleece takes dye well.

Yarns spun from Llanwenog fleece are quite soft with good stitch definition and can be used for whatever you want to make.  

I bought this breed in as a full fleece back in July 2018 from a farmer in Wales, long before I decided to create a British Breeds Project or write about every British Breed.  At the time, I washed the fleece and split it into four, dyeing three parts different colours and, luckily for me, I left one part white and this is what I will use for my Breed Project. My skirted fleece arrived weighing 1.7kg and after I had removed any other undesirable bits and second cuts, washed and dried it, it weighed 1.33kg

I had 262g of washed white fleece which, once combed, became 150g of hand combed top

I lost 10g somewhere because my skeins total 140g/418m of sport weight yarn

My finished yarn is fairly soft to the touch of the hand is a nice warm white.  My knitted piece for the project only took 16g/48m so I have plenty left to do whatever with.

The "w" in the middle looks a bit weird but it is there and is perfectly formed