Värmlandsfår - Sweden

Värmlandsfår, also known as Värmland sheep and the Värmland Forest Sheep originate in Sweden.  They began from Bengt Sonesson's large herd in Osebol near Stöllet by the Klarälven river in northern Värmland.  He had taken over the sheep from his parents and he had long been interested in sheep "of the old stock" so he did not buy any rams of modern breeds. Instead, he expanded his small flock in the 1970s with a few animals that he found on various farms around the Klarälvsdalen valley, in Munkebol, Benteby and Branäs, all of which were of the "old stock".

When Bengt was growing up, the sheep of the entire village were kept together in the forest.  The sheep mixed with sheep from other villages, which ensured that there was always new blood in the flocks.  As a rule, no adult rams were kept, but the ram lambs were allowed to graze with the ewes before they were slaughtered in the autumn.  The lambs were then born early in the winter, often around Christmas.  The sheep were usually white, but sometimes there could be black lambs.  Some were grey or "yset" as they were called, and there could be brown sheep in the area.  Bengt remembers in his youth that his parents had a horned ewe.  The rams are horned or polled.  Polled rams were most common, but horned rams also occurred among the original sheep

During the years 1992-1996, two typical rams from Hälsingland and a small flock from Dalarna were also taken into the flock.  Lars Englund and Nils Dahlbeck had come across these during their travels when they were looking for "coloured rye sheep" and when the "horned sheep" project began.  Among other things, one of these rams ended up with Roger Strömborg, a good friend of Bengt Sonesson, who had sheep from  Bengt's herd for a long time.  Another small group of sheep from Anette Back Olsson in Lekvattnet, Värmland was taken into care.

Compared with a modern meat breed, Värmland would be considered small, but it is one of the largest-bodied breeds. It was once known as Skogsfår (Woodland Sheep), and this name is no longer in use, but this breed used to survive in woodland pastures, and they still could, as they enjoy eating the leaves and bark of branches.

Värmland sheep are quite small compared to production sheep but are one of the larger breeds among the common sheep, both in number and in terms of body size.  Rams weigh 50 kg- 90 kg and stand around 72cm at the withers, and ewes weigh 45 kg- 85 kg and stand around 66cm at the withers.  Ewes are good mothers and usually have two lambs at a time, but triplets do occur.  Young ewes usually have one lamb. Värmland sheep can lamb three times in two years.

Värmland sheep have a good sense of flock, and they often become very friendly and tame. They are good grazing animals and like to eat grass.  The sheep are well suited to both small and large herds.

The Värmland sheep has been preserved in the gene bank of the Swedish Rural Sheep Association since 1997.  They are a conservation breed with 1691 registered breeding ewes (2021).

The colour varies greatly and is found in all colours, white, black, brown, beige and motely/speckled.  The motley/speckled colour did not have Bengt's sheep and is therefore not considered an original colour.  Bengt sometimes had sheep with a small white element.  This is an important aspect of the breeding work to preserve the Värmland sheep as they were.  The wool varies in type from rya to tapestry and fine wool, but also so-called vadamal wool is very common.  It is often very fine-fibred, well-suited for crafts and is very easy to spin and felt.

The wool varies within the breed; they are double-coated, and the length and quantity of the outercoat hairs vary, with fine and medium wools being the most common.

I bought this breed in as 118g of unwashed raw fleece that was part of a sample pack that featured 8 different Swedish breeds that I purchased back in early May 2022 from a lady called Anita Grahn based in Uppsala, Sweden.  I was going to add a link for Anita and her shop, but when I looked, her last social media post was in October of 2024, stating that she was in hospital, and she has not posted anything since. Her online shop is still empty as of June 2026. I do hope she is OK.  However, I can provide a link to Swedish Fibre, a small business run by Sandy Zetterlund who has a passion for knitting, wool, spinning and now a passion for bringing these beautiful fleece from these rare conservation sheep kept by small farmers into the limelight and put them in front of similarly passionate hand spinners like myself who care about ensuring the future and continuation of these rare and unique breeds.  The demand for and sale of the fleece from these rare breeds really do help the survival of the breed.  

Unwashed fleece

Unwashed locks

I washed the fleece on 21st May 2022 and the water turned muddy brown straight away.

Clean, dry, washed fleece

Once dry, I was left with 94g of clean fleece ready for combing, and it feels soft but with crispness too. The outer coat in this fleece is not particularly coarse; the fleece is soft and downy with fine hairs, with no thick, horrible hairs in this one. It's not totally soft, but it's not nasty either.  I combed it on 4th July 2023 and this gave me 50g of hand-combed nests ready to spin.

I spun this up on 3rd and 4th June 2026. It was an interesting spin. The fibres were fairly short; some were soft and downy, but the black guard hairs throughout added a coarseness to everything and made the yarn prickly. Definitely not next-to-skin grade as I have spun it. It might be so if all of the guard hairs could be removed. I achieved a yarn that was 48g/130m.

It took me a while to knit the piece for this, due to the heatwaves that we have endured this summer, and I had made a start on it only to have to leave it for a while and then when I picked it back up and started knitting again, reaching the pattern for the lettering, I discovered that I hadn't got the right number of stitches on the needles for my design and so had to undo the entire thing and start from the beginning. Thankfully, it was only about 10 rows. I finally finished knitting this piece on 19th July 2026.

Corriedale - New Zealand

The Corriedale sheep was first developed by James Little, the manager of a ranch called "Corriedale" on the south island of New Zealand by crossing British Lincoln Longwools, which preferred lush lowland grazing, with Merino's that preferred dry sparse grazing, in the early 1880's to breed a sheep that would be more suited to the intermediate grasslands of the ranches location.  Similar breeding work was undertaken by a number of ranch managers across New Zealand and Australia with the addition of Romney and Border Leicester and the breed eventually became stabilised and it was officially recognised in 1911.   

Corriedale have been exported all over the world since then and have become the origins of many other breeds by cross breeding with the local sheep and creating new names breeds or being selectively bred for particular traits and these forming new "strains" of Corriedale, which have their own names, Bond being one such strain.

The Corriedale is a medium-large sheep with rams weighing 85-105kg and ewes weighing 65-75kg.  Both sexes are polled.  They are not prolific with most ewes giving birth to one single lamb.  The chance of twins is 5-25%.  They are a dual-purpose sheep, being raised for both meat and fleece.  Some shepherds who raise this breed use jackets on their sheep to keep the wool as clean as possible.  They are usually white but in smaller flocks, like those mostly kept to sell their fleece to hand spinners, you will often find pale grey through to black and beige through to moorit in the brown range. A small amount of sheep are spotted.

Corriedale fleeces generally range from 4.5-9 kg but most are around 5.4kg.  Staple length is 7.5 - 15cm (3½ - 6 inches).  They come in a wide range of micron counts ranging from the low 20's for lambs and hoggets up to 33 microns for adult but most fall in the middle of this range at about 25-31 microns which is soft enough to be used next-to-skin for most people.  Despite the fact the micron range varies from individual to individual the quality of any particular fleece tends to be consistent in length, crimp and fineness.  The locks are rectangular and dense although soft with flat tips.  The crimp is clearly defined along the full length of the fibre.  

The bright white fleeces take dye well and the coloured fleece can also be overdyed.  You can prepare this fibre anyway you like and you can cut the long fibres in half for carding.  Weathered tips may break off and cause noils.  When spinning ensure to spin finer than you think you need as this fibre will bloom.

Many sheep that are raised in the Falkland Islands and South America are Corriedales.  Wool that is shipped through the Chilean port of Punta Arenas is likely to be Corriedale.  There is currently, in 2025, fibre that is marketed as "Falkland", "South American", "New Zealand" and "Punta Arenas" and yet there are no actual breeds of sheep that are called that and instead, with research, I have discovered that these are actually blends of a variety of sheep from farmers in those areas who have pooled their fleeces together collectively for processing and marketing and generally contain fibre from 4 or 5 different breeds that are available to purchase individually elsewhere.

 

I bought this breed in as 100g of commercially prepared fibre that is stated as being 25-30 microns with a staple of 8-12cm and I bought it in 3 colours, white, grey and brown.  For this project I have chosen to use the brown one.

Unusual for my fibre source, I found that this particular fibre contained quite a lot of kemp, white hairs, bits of vegetable matter and also slubby bits of rubbish fibres.  I removed a lot whilst pre-drafting and some more when I was actually spinning.  I started the spinning on 7th August and plied it on 10th August.  As this breed also bounces up after spinning and washing I did my best to spin as fine as I could but, again, only managed a 14wpi yarn and my finished yarn is 91g/375m, which means that I lost around 9g just in the rubbish bits of the fibre that I removed.

I knit my project piece on 15th and 16th August and used just 15g of yarn.

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 hope that you can read what this says, it does actually say Zwartbles on the top with a line underneath it and The Netherlands underneath that.  Ii is really hard to get the wording to show up on the darker wools.  This and my scrapbook sample used up 17g/65m of yarn.

Zwartbles - DK weight yarn

This yarn was meant to be spun to a certain weight for my current W.I.P. The Non-British Sheep Breeds Project and it was going great until I washed it.  It bloomed big time.  What appeared to be spinning and plying to be a yarn that measured about 16wpi, and perfect for my project, puffed up to 11wpi once it was washed and dried.  Some wools will do that and its all to do with the amount of crimp the wool has and this varies from breed to breed, some breeds don't have crimp in the wool, some have a little, some have a lot.  Not all wools are the same and crimp is just one of many factors to take into consideration.  This is one of the reasons why we have so many different breeds of wool producing sheep, all the different factors and possible combinations that affect the wool - crimp, staple length, fibre diameters, soft or scratchy, hardwearing or cuddly, matte or lustrous or something in-between, and many more, and that is just about the wool side of things, never mind about the physical abilities of the sheep that farmer is interested in such as size, how many lambs they can have a one time, how often can they lamb, do they birth easy, good mothering skills, how much meat do they produce, are they prone to footrot or other diseases which will determine the kind of environment that is best for them, can they live on poor quality grazing, can they thrive at low altitudes, high altitudes, flat land, hills, windy areas, wet areas, dry areas.  The mind boggles at the things that have to be taken into consideration.  Anyway, I digress.

Yes, so this yarn that is now no longer destined to be used, or partially used, in my intended project.  I used two bumps of spinning fibre, from two different supplies.  I had a 100g bump that I bought in 2018 from World of Wool and I had a 50g bump that came in mixed breed box called "Viking Varieties" that I bought from Fibre Hut in 2020.  I decided to use the both together and make one "larger than usual" skein of yarn, knit the sample piece and still be left with enough to make something useful with what was left.  I split both lots in half and paired them together for 2 x 75g lots of fibre and pre-drafted them together so as to begin to mix and blend the fibres from the two different sources together and even out any differences in quality, colour, tone etc as there will always be differences, even between sheep from the same flock.

As I had already checked before spinning as to whether or not this was one of the wools that would bloom after spinning, and being armed with this information, I thought I had spun it fine enough to allow for any post-spinning blooming and for the yarn to still be within my target thickness.  It turns out that I was way off in my estimations of the amount that this would bloom.  

This yarn is 11wpi, making it a double-knit weight yarn and it is 147g/438m, which is equivalent to 100g/298m.   I started my spinning on 29th May and finished on 1st June and I know that I am only now blogging about this one today, 22nd June, but I had to know for sure what was happening with this skein before I wrote about it.

Luckily, I had another 100g bump of Zwartbles fibre in my stash that I got from yet another different fibre supplier and so I spun that up, taking even more time and care to get it extra extra fine and, although that one has bounced up a lot as well, it is close enough to my target thickness and so I will be using that one to knit the project piece and I will complete the Zwartbles breed blog post, with all the information of the history of that breeds, once I have knitted the project piece up.

Combing the last of the Jacob fleece

I've finally combed the black part of the fleece from Fleece No 16 that I acquired from a farmer in Elford, Staffordshire back in June 2014. It's only taken me 9 years to get around to it.  

I started out with 350g and after combing I have 246g of combed top.  I plan to use this to make 4 different skeins of yarn.  I have ideas to use up smaller amounts of fibre that I have, some from the 2022 Fibre Advent Calendar that I don't know what else to use it for and make some barber-poled yarns. 

I might make a gradient with some small amounts of green merino and then ply that with the black/brown Jacob, that could make an interesting yarn.

This is the last of the Jacob fleece to be prepared for spinning so once this and the olive green has been spun up there is no more to be spun from the fleece that I got from Elford.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2023 Stage 12

The Cycling: Stage 12 is 169km of a hilly route that starts in Roanne and ends in Belleville-en-Beaujolais, France.

The Daily Challenge: Spin a plant fibre - if you want a real challenge, find some plant material from your garden to spin.

Suggested Fibre: Flax/Linen

What I did

I had found a fibre braid that was mostly plant fibre but I was nervous about spinning that as this time.  I want to take my time over it and sometimes the TdF can feel a little bit time pressured because you want to try and attempt the challenges and spin as much as possible for the team.  I'm glad that yesterdays spin has spilled over to today and I will just finish that instead.  It's nice to do the challenges when you can but its not the be-all and end-all of the event.

The finished yarn is greyer than I expected it to be.  I thought it would have more of a brown tinge to it.  I am considering over-dying this in the future and maybe going for a medium blue as the tone of the grey will affect the dye and I will be hoping for something similar to the blue of the last Fibonacci spun yarn, National Trust, that is a lovely muted shade of blue. The finished yarn is 100% Wool (Castlemilk Moorit x Norfolk Horn) and is worsted weight.  One skein is 225m/75g and the other is 224m/74g which means overall I have 449m/149g.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2023 Stage 11

The Cycling: Stage 11 is 180km of a flat route that starts in Clermont-ferrand and ends in Moulins, France.

The Daily Challenge: Spin a dark natural shade.

Suggested Fibre: Black Faroe Island top

What I did

I started spinning the Castlemilk Moorit x Norfolk Horn top that I hand-combed myself on 28th June.

I spun the first skein today and will finish up tomorrow.

Combing the Castlemilk Moorit x Norfolk Horn fleece

8 years ago I bought a 350g bag of raw Castlemilk Moorit x Norfolk Horn fleece.  After a sort and a wash I was left with 248g of clean fleece to prepare.  With one thing and another, being busy with all kinds of other stuff, this bag has been overlooked.  Until now.  One of the fibres on the shopping list for the upcoming TdF was "Faroe Island" and it transpires that this suggestion was for a challenge that will involve a natural dark fibre.  I have this bag of natural dark fleece that is just waiting to become natural dark fibre. 

It is really difficult to describe the colour, kind of dark grey brown but the brown does seem to be more focused on the tips so maybe it is just a bit of sunbleaching?  Castlemilk Moorit sheep are kind of tan through to dark brown so I am expecting some kind of brown in there anyway.

After combing I was left with 163g of hand-combed nests in a whole range of shades so what I decided to do was to combine them on my blending hackle to even out the colours more and this resulted in just a 10g loss, leaving me with 153g of lovely brown-grey top to spin.

I'm ready for the TdF now.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2021 Stage 8

The Cycling: Stage 8 is 150.8km and starts in Oyonnax and ends in Le Grand-Bornand. There are 5 classified climbs today. This is part of the Alps sections of the race.  Dylan Teuns won the stage.  

Team Challenge: "Oyonnax is where we start today; a town that once had the monopoly on producing boxwood combs.  In fact, this is such a big part of the town's history that they have a museum with over 16,000 items from old wooden combs to more modern plastic and bio-plastic versions.

When preparing fibre we either card it to make batts and slivers or comb it to make tops.  (See that seamless link?  We've had our hobnobs today!)

Today's challenge is to spin from a different preparation that you normally do.  Rolags, batts, slivers, rovings, tops - there are lots of options!".

What I planned to do and what I achieved: I'm not doing the challenge today as I am spinning a 100g bump of Herdwick plus 25g of Herdwick from a British Breeds Sample back, both purchased from World of Wool.  As I've done in the past I split the larger amount into two by holding the two ends together, finding the middle and separating into two equal amounts at that point.  Then with the sample amount, I split that into two the same way but then stretched each out to the same length as the larger bumps and spun both the sample and the larger bump at the same time in each case so that the fibres mixed.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take work-in-progress photos of the spinning but I do have a photo of the larger bump of Herdwick.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2021 Stage 6

The Cycling: Stage 6 160.6km and starts in Tours and ends in Châteauroux - Val de Loire. The route contains just one category 4 climb.  All riders took Covid-19 tests yesterday following the time trial and all have come back negative, it's good that they are doing tests for the safety of everyone. Mark Cavendish won the stage.  

Team Challenge: "The cyclists are passing through Amboise today; the place where Leonardo Da Vinci spent his last days.  Famed for many pieces of work, Da Vinci also designed a weaving loom which wasn't built until 500 years after his death - and it worked perfectly!  Another piece of work by him was 'Madonna of the Yarnwinder', a painting depicting the Virgin Mary and an infant Christ, holding a crucifix-shaped yarn winder.

Today's challenge is a photographic one - show us your yarn on its winder! (And if you don't have a winder, show us what you use instead!)".

What I planned to do and what I achieved: First off, I Googled the painting as I had never heard of it.  It is interesting that I discovered that there is more than one version of this painting, they are similar to each other but with notable differences.

The information gathered from an official Leonardo Da Vinci site states that the original has probably been lost and that several copies still exist and that there is strong speculation that at least two of copies are by Leonardo Da Vinci himself, pictured above, but there is a lot of debate surrounding them and that any or all of them could in fact be by his talented students.  The original works is securely dated at 1501.

The work was intended for Florimond Robertet, Secretary to the Kind of France and shows the winder shaped like a cross and symbolizes the Passion of Christ and His future death.  It seems that Mary is trying to pull the child away from the symbol of his future death but she is powerless to prevent the Crucifixion and his destiny.  The painting is known by several names including Madonna of the Yarnwinder, Madonna of the Spindle and Madonna with the Distaff.

Today I have plied the Moorit Shetland that I spun yesterday and this has given me a sport weight yarn of 125g/251m, which means that another 753m is added to the team total.

I'm able to complete the challenge again today and snapped a quick picture of my newly spun Shetland whilst it was still on my Niddy Noddy (a form of wool winder).

The finished skein of Moorit Shetland that is part of my British Breeds Project

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2021 Stage 5

The Cycling: Stage 5 is a Time Trial and is just 27.2km long and starts in Changè and ends in Laval.  The 30 year old French lady who caused the big crash on Saturday, Stage 1, has finally handed herself in and is currently in custody at a police station in  Landerneau. On Sunday, the Finistère gendarmie announced the opening of a judicial investigation into "involuntary injuries with disability not exceeding three months by a deliberate violation of an obligation of safety or prudence". She could face up to two years in prison and a fine of $35,000.  The race organisers are no longer looking to prosecute her but she's not off the hook yet as any of the riders could still sue her themselves due to injuries, damaged and wrecked bikes etc, especially the three that had to abandon the race due to injuries received, medical bills, loss of earnings and future earnings as they will probably have to pull out of other races too until injuries are healed. Tadej Pogačar won the stage.  

Team Challenge: "Time Trial - today it is just you and the clock.  The fastest time trial that the Tour de France has seen was set by Rohan Dennis in 2015; 9 miles in 14 minutes and 56 seconds.  Now that is a lot of spinning!

Your challenge today is to see what length single you can spin in 14 minutes and 56 seconds.  No plying necessary!  On your marks, set, spin!".

What I planned to do and what I achieved: I am doing the challenge today, whoooo hooooo.  I am spinning some Shetland in natural shade Moorit, 100g bump and 25g that was in British Breeds Sample pack, both from World of Wool.  I split the larger amount into two by holding the two ends together, finding the middle and separating into two equal amounts at that point.  Then with the sample amount, I split that into two the same way but then stretched each out to the same length as the larger bumps and spun both the sample and the larger bump at the same time in each case so that the fibres mixed.

I managed to spin 32.56m in the 14 minutes 56 seconds allowed, timed on my stop watch.  Taking the single off the bobbin onto my niddy-noddy, tying it, taking it off the niddy-niddy to measure it and then feeing it back onto the bobbin was great fun, NOT!  The issue is that there is so much energy in the spun single that it just becomes one big twisty-twirly-knotting-up-on-itself mess.  When you ply with another single, which means you twist the fibre in the opposite way to which it is twisted as a single, it removes some of that energy.

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Once the measured single was back on the bobbin I was able to finish spinning that half of the fibre and then spin the second single.

Grey Jacob

I don't need to blog about this breeds characteristics because I have already done that when I wrote about the Black Jacob that I spun up for the breed sampler.  The information about the breed can be found in this post here.

I decided to use Grey Jacob to make the centre piece of my British Breeds Project, a piece that would explain simply what all the sample pieces represent.  I also have a decent amount of Jacob fleece in my stash and therefore at my disposal.

I decided to use the mixed colour fleece from two different Jacob Fleece that were from the same flock of sheep and that I acquired way back in 2014 from a farmer friend of an ex-colleague and friend.  These were from Fleece No.2 and Fleece No.16.

From Fleece No.2 there was 276g of washed mixed colour fleece and this gave me 135g of fluff after combing and blending to even out the colour.  Fleece No.16 there was 187g of mixed colour fleece and this gave me 138g after combing.  Because of the difference in the shades I separated it out into the darkest and lightest of fibres and blended these together to even out the colours as much as possible.

These are the handcombed nests from both fleece, sorted into darkest and lightest shades.

Even after blending there was still a slight difference in the nests so I spun them as a lighter yarn and a darker yarn.  There is not a great difference of shade but its enough to be noticeable if you were to work them both on the same project.

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand and is so much nicer than the black Jacob sample.  Both skeins spun as worsted weight and one is 135g/320m and the other is 132g/345m.  My knitted piece for the project only took 30g/79m so I have plenty left to do whatever with.

Leicester Longwool Sheep

The Leicester Longwool has been around since the 1790's having being improved from the now extinct Dishley Leicesters that were developed by Robert Bakewell from the local landrace breeds.  He was the man who introduced the idea of "a breeding season" and keeping rams and ewes separate to allow for selective breeding of desirable traits and also the idea of the breed assocation for each breed of sheep.  Robert's Dishley Leicesters died out soon after his death in 1795.  In turn, the Leicester Longwool breed is the pre-cursor and direct ancestor of both the Border Leicester and the Bluefaced Leicester.

The Leicester Longwool sheep used to be the most common breed in England but now it is critically endangered, at the time of writing, is in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust category 3: Vulnerable (500-900) registered breeding ewes. They are very rare these days but are still most popular in the East Midlands, where the breed originates from.

The Leicester Longwool is a large, hornless sheep with wool on the crown.  It has a white face and legs, a slightly Roman nose and the nostrils are dark and it grows a heavy even fleece.  They produce a large size fleece that weighs 2.3kg-8.2kg with staples that are 10-14 inches long (25.5cm-35.5cm).  Sometimes they are sheared twice a year so that the staple length would be more manageable.  

The fleece is dense, silky and lustrous with a soft handle.  The locks hang individually with a well defined crimp or wave over the entire lock.  Coloured patches in a white fleece are not acceptable and the white fleece needs to be protected from this genetic mechanism.  Coloured fleece are acceptable but they must be coloured all over and not coloured patches on a white fleece.  Fleece should be wholly white or wholly coloured and the colours are white, black or "English Blue" which is a multi-shaded shaded grey

This fleece is usually too long to be carded but can be spun from teased locks, picked, flicked or combed.  Keep your hands well separated when spinning and when drafting hold it very lightly and keep re-arranging the mass of fibre to keep it flowing evenly and smoothly.  White fleece takes dye clearly and the high lustre makes colours pop.  The English Blue can also be dyed.

Yarns spun from Leicester Longwool fleece will be strong and is good for lace patterns as it gives excellent stitch definition.  Might not be suitable for next-to-skin use but a shawl or wrap would be perfect.  

I had a lot of trouble locating any fleece or fibre from this breed due to its rarity and I finally found some and bought this breed in as 450g of raw fleece but I ended up getting it from someone selling it on Ebay, which can always be a bit hit and miss.  There weren't many photos and they weren't the best quality, obviously taken with a mobile phone without much care, but there were a couple of photos of the sheep the fleece had come from and I was happy to accept that it was a coloured Leicester Longwool sheep so I took a punt and hoped for the best.

Parts of the fleece was very dirty and sticky with grease

Matted and dry, brittle parts of the fleece.

I wasn't totally happy with the quality of the fleece when it arrived and I inspected it with great care to see what the issue was.  There was a few clumps that were just a matted/felted mess and then were was parts that were very dry and brittle, almost like old paper, and just touching it to gently tease the locks apart without any pulling made it just break into tiny bits.  It basically disintegrated in my hands.  I washed everything else, which was 329g out of the original 450g. I did contact the seller, who took no responsibility for the condition of the fleece whatsoever and claimed it was freshly sheared, although its a bit early in the year for shearing, and blamed me for the damaged fleece.

Interesting colours!

I combed the fleece when it was dry and I got some very interesting and very differently coloured hand combed nests that weighed a total of 153g.  Whilst it would have been fun to spin this up and see what the end yarn looked like I decided to put it through my blending hackle to even out the colour and produce an even coloured yarn.

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand and only slightly prickly, as many longwools are due to the fibre type, but I do like the colour now that it's even.  It's more of a dense yarn as opposed to being light and bouncy.  This is obviously the English Blue and there is 125g/195m.  My knitted piece for the project only took 50g/78m so I have some left to do whatever with.