Perendale - New Zealand

The Perendale was developed in the 1950s as a dual-purpose meat and fibre breed for use in steep hill situations by Geoffrey Peren at Massey University in New Zealand.  Peren crossed Cheviot rams on Romney ewes to produce this breed.  Although Perendales were first imported into the USA in 1977, they are still rare in North America.  They are a medium-sized longwool sheep that does well in cold and wet climates.  Both sexes are polled.

The number of this breed has increased since the 1980s because hill-farming has increased and these sheep are perfectly adapted to that kind of terrain.  Rams generally weigh 100kg-118kg and ewes weigh substantially less at 54kg-68kg.  These are very much a commercial breed of sheep that were bred to replace the pure breed Romneys that had deviated from its original type over the years and were no longer doing so great in the hilly areas of the north island of New Zealand, despite the fact that they had been on the land since 1853.  Perendale's are bred for their meat and wool and it is hard to find any really good concise information about them as they are not really the kind of sheep that people take to shows. 

Perendale is a bouncy wool, which will spin up with a spring to it, as opposed to the compact sleekness of English longwools.  This lofty quality can add warmth to sweaters or cushioning qualities to rugs, depending on the fineness of the fibre and your plans for using it.

There are both finer and coarser ranges within the breed, and New Zealand standards have moved toward the coarse end of the scale lately in response to market demands and husbandry realities.  Thus some sheep are producing wools for general knitting yarns whilst others grow fleeces best suited for harder wearing textiles like rugs, bags and upholstery.

Fleece weigh 3.4kg-5kg with staple lengths of 4-6 inches (10cm-15cm).  The fibre diameters are usually 28-35 microns but in New Zealand there is a shift more towards 30-37 microns.

The fibres have even crimp with low lustre and free of kemp or black hairs.  They are usually white, although there are some coloured flocks.  The fleece will take dye well but not with the same clarity that other longwools do and without any shine.  It can be spun straight from the lock, be flicked or combed although if you have a fleece that is short you can card that.  The fibres will capture air and be bouncy, if you are spinning worsted you may need to spin finer than you would usually to allow for bloom.  Yarns will be slightly crisp and will be good for texture stitches and patterns.

I brought this breed in as 100g of pre-prepared fibre from World of Wool ready to spin in May 2022.

This is another breed that will bounce up after it has been spun and so you have to spin it finer than you would normally spin most other wools to achieve the yarn weight that you desire.  It took me a few days to spin this, as I've not been well, but trying to carry on and do something to stop me from climbing the walls.  So, I started spinning this on 19th June and finished it on 21st June.

It spun up as a 16wpi/Light Fingering weight yarn that is 94g/343m and has a really nice feel to it and it is soft but not as soft as Merino, obviously.  I knit the panel for my project on 3rd July 2025 and I think you can read the words clearly enough.  This and my sample used up 18g/66m of yarn.

This one is a lot easier to read than some of the others.

Making a blend of the blue Whiteface Dartmoor

Back in September I dyed some Whiteface Dartmoor a blue-purple colour. I have now blended it with some other bits and pieces ready for spinning. I picked out a load of fibre but three of the bumps were close to what I wanted but not quite there.  After a little test I decided that if I blend the three together then it will give me the exact shade that I was looking for, as my intention is to only put the blend through the hackle once as I don't want it too well blended but these individual bumps needs to be well blended together first.  I blended them in roughly equal amounts so used all of the Merino and about half of the Corriedale.

Top right is Merino in shade Fuchsia, top left is Corriedale in shade Tanzanite, bottom left is Merino in shade Sapphire and bottom right is the finished blend of the three

A = 57g of blended Merino/Corriedale
B = 5g of Angelina in Ultraviolet
C = 20g of Tussah Silk in Lilac
D = 25g of Merino - WoW Northern Lights in shade Typhoon
E = 7g of Merino in Lavender
F = 15 of Hemp in Lilac
G = 14g of unknown white longwool
H = 13g of Sari Silk in Moon River
I = 324g of Whiteface Dartmoor wool

I had to loosen up the dyed Whiteface Dartmoor before I put it through the hackle because it had felted slightly in places during the dyeing process.  I lost 16g in the process, which is almost nothing.

The fibre content is: 67.5% Whiteface Dartmoor wool, 13.5% Merino wool, 5% Corriedale wool, 4% Tussah Silk, 3% Hemp, 3% Longwool breed, 3% Sari Silk and 1% Angelina.

This is another blend that probably won't be spun for the the TdF but hopefully it won't be too long before I get around to it.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2021 Stage 20

The Cycling: Stage 20 is only 30km long as it is Time Trial day and starts in Libourne and ends in Saint-Émilion.  No climbs, just rolling terrain.  Wout van Aert won the stage.  

Team Challenge: "The cyclists have their second individual time trial today.  For the first one at the beginning of Tour de Fleece we spun under tight time constraints - now we're trying something else.

Your challenge today is to spin 10g of fibre as fine as you possibly can.  No plying, just singles.".

What I planned to do and what I achieved:  I'm not doing the challenge today.  I've spun Whiteface Dartmoor today.  I have a huge fleece, it was originally just under 6kg on arrival but I've just used a relatively tiny amount that I have combed and I got 117m of sport weight yarn, which is another 351m for the team total.

Pure Cotswold Lamb Shawl - Design S203

This is my second attempt at this shawl, the first being when I discovered that I didn't have enough of the yarn I was making it with, or should I say that the figures for the amount of metres of yarn I would need was massively out in the pattern.  This design was originally a really old Danish pattern for a doily and has been re-purposed/adapted/re-published as a shawl design using yarn rather than fine crochet thread.   Had I read to the end of the pattern before I started I would have seen that there was a note from the designer to say that she had run out of yarn before the end of the design.  My question is "why didn't she have the yarn requirement figures adjusted before publishing the pattern?"

Anyway, the yarn I was originally making this design with was used on another shawl and for this design I chose some Cotswold Lamb that I spun from an award winning flock, not only because its beautiful but because I know I will not run out of yarn this time as I have so many skeins of this and I used three full skeins plus a tiny bit from another one.

I had a total panic towards the end of making this shawl.  With 15 rows left to complete the metal knitting tip fell off one end of the wire of the circular needles.  With more than 800 stitches on the needles at the time you can imagine that I let out a little scream but thankfully it happened just after I had finished knitting a row and was putting my knitting down to take a break so all that fell off was 2 stitches but they were so clearly defined I was able to just pop them back onto the wire until I super glued the end back onto the needle.

The cast off was a special stretchy kind of cast off that took me over 2 1/2 hours to do so that the edging was stretchy enough to make the beautiful shaped edge you see below.

 I have plenty of yarn left so keep a lookout for more Cotswold lamb shawls in the future.

Same shawl, different colour and different sheep - Design F201

After just completing the wonderful "50 shades of grey" Jacobs wool shawl I decided that it would look great in plain natural white.  I chose to make it from some Teeswater x Shetland wool that I spun up about 3 years ago.  This is a cross-breed wool, meaning that each parent was a different breed of sheep and so all fibres have the same qualities as opposed to blending the wool from the fleece of two different sheep breeds, whereby the fibres would have different qualities and it would be called a "blend".

My little Russian nesting doll style stitch markers are doing a great job in dividing each pattern repeat up.  They really keep me in check and stop me making big mistakes.

I think the final result is really pretty and it doesn't take forever to make.

Lincoln Longwool - Softly Solid Jade

I brought this from The Fibre Fairy back in October 2012.  I bought 4 different large braids from her and this is only the second lot that I have spun up so far.  My other one to date was the green Polwarth wool.  The Fibre Fairy appears to have closed down the business, which is probably why I got so many bargains.

Being so happy with the result of my spinning and dying of the Lincoln Longwool lamb's fleece I decided to try this Lincoln Longwool in shade "softly solid jade".  There is 345g of fibre here, that is a big braid of combed fibre.

I started spinning this way back on 9th June and I separated it out into 3 fairly even amounts and then each of those amounts into two as I spun up each little bag, and its taken until 9th August to finish spinning it all.  It was quite compacted and hard work to spin, made a lot easier by pulling it apart as best as I could to loosen all the fibres out.  I made 3 skeins of 2-ply yarn.  Its not as nice as the Lincoln Longwool that I dyed and spun myself from raw fleece and doesn't have anywhere near the same amount of lustre, which it should have if enough care had been taken during the dying process, which judging by the lack of lustre and how it has compacted I would guess has not happened in this case.

All three skeins have come out as sport weight yarn and are 107g/269m, 111g/263m and 107g/258m and will be used together to make one large shawl.

Lincoln Longwool Lamb Part III - Purple

Following on from my last post about this fleece, this is the third and final part of the same lamb's fleece that I purchased back in July 2014.

I dyed this part of the fleece a really rich purple, very similar to Cadbury's purple, using Colour Craft All in One Easyfix dye in Purple.  I started out with 208g of dyed locks and after combing in was left with 129g of hand-combed nests ready to be spun, a yield of around 62%.

The camera flash has not helped with colour reproduction in the first photo, which shows the locks of dyed fleece drying after being dyed.  The middle photo shows some of the hand-combed nests and the final photo shows one of the "singles" on a bobbin after being spun containing approximately half of the spun nests.

This produced a Light Fingering weight yarn, 125g/432m that has strong rich colour and a fantastic lustre.

So that is all 3 different colours lots of the fleece, dyed and spun.  I was inspired to dye them these particular colours by something that I have had for many years and that is a tea-light lantern that I believe I purchased from Boots the Chemist more than 15 years ago, that has 3 different colours of glass panels, the colours are repeated around the back too.

Lincoln Longwool Lamb Part II - Deep Violet

This is the second lot of dyed fleece from the same Lincoln Longwool Lamb's fleece.  This was the fleece that arrived in "unusual" packaging and was really damp and smelly.

This second lot, I dyed using Colour Craft All In One Easyfix dye in Deep Violet.  I started out with 207g of fleece and after I had combed this I was left with about 127g of nests to be spun, a yield of around 61%, less than the maroon but I did manage to felt a bit of the fleece so that had to be binned.

I took the photo of the dyed locks using the flash but this has severely distorted the colour.  The bottom photo is more true to colour.  I completely forgot to take photos of the fleece being combed or of the nests ready for spinning.

This made a Light Fingering yarn, 127g/404m that has wonderful lustre and depth of colour.

There is just one more lot of this fleece in another colour.  I can't wait!

Lincoln Longwool Lamb Part I - Maroon

I bought 1kg of Lincoln Longwool Lambs fleece in July 2014 from a guy in Sleaford, Lincs, who was selling quite a few of these fleece.

It arrived in "unusual" packaging, it was inside a cereal box which was wrapped in paper.  The packaging was dry on the outside but the fleece felt really damp and the locks felt heavy.  When it first arrived it was really filthy and after taking photographs of the fleece, I weighed it at 1kg and the put the fleece into a carrier bag and left it in our laundry room, leaving the bag open for the air to get to it and dry it out.  I weighed it again about 24 hours later and it had lost 100g in weight and smelt musty but was now quite dry, as you would expect it to have arrived.

I sorted through it and threw away 112g of rubbish and then washed it as soon as my hanging drier was available - it was summer and I take advantage of washing/drying/dyeing fleece whilst its dry and warm and so its almost in constant use.  I was left with 621g of clean fleece after washing and drying it.

This fleece was then stored for a while until, on 10th April 2015, I split the fleece into 3 equal parts and dyed each lot a different colour; maroon, deep violet and purple.

The first lot, I dyed using Colour Craft All In One Easyfix dye in Maroon.  I started out with 206g of fleece and after I had combed this I was left with about 150g of nests to be spun, a yield of almost 73%

This made a Light Fingering yarn, 140g/490m that has wonderful lustre.

There are two more lots of this fleece in other colours and I can't wait to get my hands on them.

Teeswater x Shetland Fleece

This is another fleece that is a cross-breed, this time its a Teeswater crossed with a Shetland.  An interesting fleece as you have the long wavy lustrous locks of the Teeswater combined with the shorter, softer, highly crimped locks of the Shetland.  This came from a farm close to Yeovil in Somerset in July 2012.

It arrived weighing 1.8kg and after a quick sort and washing weighed 1.45kg.

The next job was to turn this beautiful fleece into spinnable fibre using my wool combs.  That was a big job but I thoroughly enjoyed it as its a beautiful fleece to work with.  Yeah, that's me holding my big bag of hand combed top just after I had finished combing the last of the fleece.  It took me about 3 weeks to comb my way through the entire fleece, starting on 19th January and finishing on 11th February but I didn't work solely on this, I had other things to do as well.  I got 955g of hand combed nests to spin, which is about 66% yield from this fleece.

I started spinning on 12th February and this was an absolute joy to spin.  It took me a full 7 days to spin the three skeins shown in the photo below, which has beautiful lustre, just look at that shine and that's not flash white-out as I took the photo without the flash being on.  The skeins are in need of their final bath though.

I finished spinning this fleece on 5th March and I got 9 skeins of yarn from this fleece, totalling 912g after their final baths which washed out any remaining dirt and lanolin.  Here is just one of those skeins in close up.

This will make a beautiful bridal shawl one day.

Gotland fleece part II

This follows on from my post about the problematical Gotland fleece that I bought earlier this year.

I took my 239g of shorter fibre hand combed nests and spun them into this lovely fine yarn to produce a Fingering Weight yarn of 235g/648m.  You may notice that 4g are missing, this was the last of the dirt that washed out after the combs opened up the locks.

I then went on to make a Sport Weight yarn, 2 skeins: 93g/307m and 101g/324m and its a medium-grey colour.

The last of the hand combed nests were spun into this Sport Weight yarn, 2 skeins: 115g/335m and 116g/342m and this is a dark grey colour.

Considering the fact that I spun the nests up randomly, I appear to have made two different shades of grey yarn from the longest fibres.  This has worked out pretty well I think seeing as there was no deliberate intention of making light and dark grey yarns, its done it all by itself.  Here they are, side by side.

Gotland fleece Part I

I wanted a longwool that wasn't white and I did make enquiries about a Black Wensleydale fleece, which are rare to come by, but it was out of my league financially.  I settled on this Gotland fleece from P J Watts of Kingston Manor Farm, Canterbury, the same lady I bought the Romney fleece from.

When it arrived it weighed 1673g and I was really excited by the high lustre of the grey locks and it was really soft too.  Yes, it had sunburnt tips, a lot of fleece does and these break off during preparation, but what I wasn't expecting was what I discovered at the sheared end of the locks.

So, just what was at the sheared end of the locks?  A nice big scurf and lanolin encrusted "rise".  The "rise" is the name given to the part of the lock that indicates the end of last seasons growth and the start of the new seasons growth and this part of the lock is weak and normally breaks off.  You get this "rise" in every fleece but it is not usually this big and not usually this visually pronounced.  I think the breed of the sheep has a lot to do with it in this case.

I made a start on washing the fleece but was finding it really difficult to pull the individual locks away from the main fleece, this was because of this nasty matted rise as the white strip was pretty much felted.  I asked for advice from other spinners on a forum of what would be the best way to proceed with this problematical fleece and discovered that this particular breed of sheep needs to be sheared around January/February time, due to this breeds individual fleece growth season.  This fleece wasn't sheared until June 2014.  As you can see from these photos, this "rise" accounts for about 1/3 of the lock length and this has to be removed and binned.  The easiest way to proceed was to remove the rise, either by pulling it off if it will, or cutting if off if needs be, before washing the fleece.  I done a mixture of these methods.

After removing the "rise" from the majority of the fleece and washing it, my original 1673g was reduced to 960g.  When it came to the combing process, I started with the small amount of fleece that I had not already removed this rise from.  I loaded my comb lock by lock, as usual, making sure that the "rise" was at the back of the comb as I only want to be combing the good part of the fleece and leaving the rubbish at the back of the comb.  See the photos below of this loading process.

The photos in the top row below show what this same comb-full of locks looks like after one pass through.  The photos on the bottom row show the rise that had broken off during the combing process along with a bit of coarse fibres then what the rubbish looked like once I had removed it from the comb and before it went in the bin.

The photos below show the locks after their second comb through, with the last photo showing the rubbish produced this time.

I always do at least 3 full pass-through's of the combs on every fleece that I prepare.  A full pass-through is combing the locks from one comb to the other until all that is left is the rubbish on the comb that you are combing from, which is removed from that particular comb, swap combs from one hand to the other and go again for the next pass through.

As you can see by the end of the third pass through of the combs, there is not a lot of rubbish and from the last photo you can see that it is mostly the sunburnt tips that have now broken off.

I dizzed this off the combs, stopping about 3" short of the comb and pulling away so that all of the shortest fibres, 3" or less, were left on the comb.  The longest fibres which I had dizzed off were made into a nest and put in one bag and then I returned to the combs and dizzed off the shorter fibres into nests and these went into a different bag.  At the end of the combing process I was left with 239g of the shorter fibres and 461g of the longer fibres.

Angelo - the Cotswold lamb - Part II

So, Angelo's fleece was 1950g when it arrived and after having the second cuts removed and being washed I am left with 1413g, which needs to be hand combed.  Look at the lovely pillowcase full of gorgeous locks.  Please see Part I for more info.

Now to the combs.  With this fleece I made sure that I loaded the combs up with the cut end on the comb and the tip hanging down like it was on the sheep.

As you can see the tips are still a bit tight and a bit mucky but the combs should get these loosened and opened up.  The photo on the right I think looks like Santa's beard.

Slowly turning locks into fluff...

We have fluff.  Wow, look at the white fluff.  Beautiful!

A hand-combed nest and a small sample of spinning.  Not quite got it right but it was good to practice so I know how to adjust my spinning to this fleece and what I want to get from it.

Spinning the singles ready for plying and showing fineness with the UK 1 pence coin.

I plied the singles and skeined them up into just over 100g in each skein because they still looked a little dirty to me, something I really noticed  just as I was about to wash the second batch of 3 skeins and so I lay one of the first 3 skeins, which was all nice and clean, in amongst the yarns waiting to be washed.  As you can see from the photo on the left, there was a bit of a difference in colour.  This is down to those tips still being a little stuck together and discoloured as I combed them but its all come out in the wash.

I got 10 skeins of yarn, all around the 100g or thereabouts mark and all in the sport weight range, all absolutely beautiful and soft with high lustre.  The last photo shows them all lined up in number order, Skein 1 on the left, Skein 10 on the right.

These are going to make some fabulous wedding shawls, can't wait to get cracking on these but I have so many other things to do first.