Bluefaced Leicester Sheep

The Bluefaced Leicester, or BFL for short, belongs to the English Longwool family of sheep.  The term Blue-faced is actually just an illusion as there are no blue hairs involved, just short white hair over black skin and used to be a rare trait.  The breed is a descendent of the original native (or landrace) breeds of the Leicestershire area which were improved by a carefully monitored breeding program introduced by Robert Bakewell after he took over his fathers farm in 1755.  

Gone were the days of keeping all the sheep together in a field and in came the days of keeping rams and ewes away from each other and only allowing selected rams with specific desirable traits to breed with the ewes.  The breed he developed was known as the "New Leicesters" or the "Dishley Leicesters" after the farms name of Dishley Grange.  

Robert Bakewell is also responsible for the concept of the Breed Society or Association with a set of rules to follow or abide by in order to keep breeds pure.  He died in 1795 at the age of 70 and his Dishley Leicesters died out soon after his death but the Leicester Longwool traces its lineage back to the Dishley Leicesters and Bakewell's flock. So, how do we go from Leicester Longwool to Bluefaced Leicester?  In the early 20th century breeders in Northumberland started selective breeding specifically for the Bluefaced trait and cross breed with the Teeswater breed and a new breed was born (literally!).  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 18th century.

The Bluefaced Leicester sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "Other UK Native Breeds" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there are over 3000 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society. They are also used to produce cross breed sheep.  North Country Mules are produced by using a Bluefaced Leicester ram with a ewe suited to the locality of the flock, usually one of the Blackfaced Mountain breeds and the ewes produced are then cross-bred again with rams of larger meat breeds such as Texel or Suffolk.

The Bluefaced Leicester is a medium to large build sheep with a distinctive Roman nose and the short hair is white over blue-black skin. The head, neck and legs are free of wool.  Neither sexes grow horns.

They produce a medium size fleece of between 1 and 3kg that is demi-lustrous but fine and soft. The fleece is usually white but there is a recessive gene that shows up to produce black and grey fleeces. The staple length is between 3 and 6 inches long (7.5-15 cm long) and is one of the most predictable fleeces in many aspects including micron count and fibre length.

This fleece can be challenging because the locks are so slippery, slim and springy. Unless you get a short fleece then you don't want to card this, it is best prepared by picking, combing or flicking.  This fleece dyes beautifully and clearly.  It is durable enough to wear well but fine enough to not be scratchy and there is just enough lustre to make dyes produce shimmering clear colours.  It blends well with other fibres such as silk or mohair and is often blended with other wools too

Yarns spun from Bluefaced Leicester fleece are soft enough to be worn next to skin but can take hard wear too and is good for socks, mittens, hats and jumpers as well as luxury items such as shawls and scarves.  

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared fibre in a box containing 50g each of four British Breeds and this one is a coloured variety of the breed and described as the British rival to Merino.  

Spun to double knit weight my yarn is 50g/135m

My finished yarn is of good quality to the touch of the hand and I like the colour, its more brown than grey, the photo is a little deceiving.  My knitted piece for the project only took 25g/68m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Swaledale Sheep

On with the next breed for my British Breeds project and its the turn of the Swaledale, named after the valley in which the breed originated in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.  The Swaledale belongs to the Blackfaced Mountain category of sheep.

The Swaledale sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "Other UK Native Breeds" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there are over 3000 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society and a quick search reveals that there are over 1,200 pedigree flocks of Swaledale sheep within the UK alone, so there are good numbers of these sheep around.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 20th century.  They are used to produce cross breed sheep known as Mashams and North Country Mules.  The Masham is produced by breeding a Teeswater ram (or sometimes a Wensleydale ram) to either a Dalesbred or a Swaledale ewe (and sometimes a Rough Fell ewe is used).  Ewe lambs from these crossings are then raised as breeding ewes in commercial flocks due to improved qualities.  North Country Mules are produced by using a Bluefaced Leicester ram with a ewe suited to the locality of the flock, usually one of the Blackfaced Mountain breeds and the ewes produced are then cross-bred again with rams of larger meat breeds such as Texel or Suffolk.

Swaledales are usually found in the more mountainous regions of the UK but particularly up in the Yorkshire Dales, County Durham and the pennine fells of Cumbria.  They are well known in the English Lake District, along with Dalesbred, Rough Fell and Herdwick breeds of sheep.  They are related to both the Scottish Blackface and Rough Fell and are noted for their ability to thrive in exposed locations, although the specific origins of the breed are unknown.

The Swaledale is a medium build sheep with a blackface, white muzzle and white circles around the eyes and the legs are free of wool.  Both sexes grow curled horns, although the males horns grow much larger.  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.

They produce a medium size fleece that contains hair and kemp that protects them against wet weather, along with finer wool to keep them warm. It has the largest proportion of finer wool out of the three most similar breeds, Swaledale, Herdwick and Rough Fell.  This is a breed that produces wool that is definitely not for worn next to skin wear.  The fleece is white to off-white but if you leave the kemp and dark fibres in then yarn produced will appear grey, this is what I have for my sample.  Depending on the source of information, the staple length is between 4 and 8 inches long (10-20.5 cm long) and can be anything from 1.6 to 3 kilos in weight. 

This fleece can be spun from teased locks, it can be carded or combed using Viking combs.  During combing the fibres will pull off in sequence of length as always, which means that you will first pull off the longest fibres, then the medium length and the kemp will come off last so you can spin them like that and have and everchanging yarn that may barber-pole during plying or you could take 3 lengths at a time and stagger them so you have each type of fibre in your hands at all times and thereby re-combining them as you spin as long as you keep your grip light else they will separate again.  Carding will keep the fibres mixed.

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

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared fibre in a box containing 50g each of four British Breeds and you can see the dark fibres and the kemp in this photo.  I also had a 25g sample that I got with another pack and the small sample was slightly different in quality so I stretched it out to the same length as the 50g and spun them together at the same time.

Spun to Sport Weight my yarn is 74g/185m

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand and you can feel the prickly hair and kemp but I do like the colour.  My knitted piece for the project only took 20g/50m so I have some left to do whatever with.

Romney Sheep

Carrying on with my British Breeds project my next breed is the Romney, named after the Romney Marshes in Kent in southeast England, on which the ancestors of this breed were introduced in Roman times.  The Romney belongs to the English Longwool category of sheep.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 13th century.

The Romney sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "Other UK Native Breeds" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there are over 3000 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society and a quick search reveals when it comes to the numbers of Romney sheep worldwide we are talking in millions, not thousands, and probably hundreds of millions as there are at least 25 million in New Zealand alone, having being introduced there in 1853 with Coopworth and Perendale breeds being developed in New Zealand by crossing other breeds with the Romneys.  These new breeds will obviously not be included in my British Breeds project.

Historically, Romney Marsh is a coastal plain in southeast England that is about a hundred square miles and much of it lies below sea level and is kept habitable by a Roman era system of drainage ditches and sea walls which were expanded in Medieval times.  The Romans bought sheep to the marshes but they suffered health problems and poor quality fleece due to the wet conditions but over centuries the sheep did slowly start to adapt.  In the 1800's Shepherds of the Marshes improved on these native sheep by introducing Leicester Longwool sheep from Robert Bakewell's flock and this then led to the Romney that we know today that grows high quality fleece even in wet conditions.

The Romney is a large sheep with a open white face and wool that grows over the legs.  The breed standard varies from country to country but here in the UK rams should have a wide broad head that is masculine in appearance and ewes should have a full face.  The back is long, wide and strong, the chest wide and the neck short and strong too. So kind of a stocky solid build, certainly not gangly.  Neither sex have horns and there should be no dark hair or kemp in an otherwise white fleece, although some coloured varieties do exist.

They produce a large dense fleece with well defined crimp and ranges from moderately coarse to fairly fine and is finer than most of the other Longwool breeds.  The finest wool can be worn next to skin but for the most part this breed it probably best being worn one layer away from the skin.  Coarser fleece are best used for outwear such as jackets and hats or household items that need durability such as rugs, chair seat pads and other soft furnishings.  Depending on the source of information, the staple length is between 4 and 8 inches long (10-20.5 cm long) and can be anything from 3.6 to over 10 kilos in weight. 

This fleece can be spun from picked or flicked locks, it can be carded or combed, made into drum-carded batts or carded rolags, its very versatile, very lustrous and takes dye really well.  This breed can be prone to "canary staining" which is a yellow colouring of the fleece caused by bacteria due to the damp or wet conditions that these sheep often survive in.  Sometimes it can affect the entire fleece, other times it will just be a section of it.  It may wash out, to an extent, but can't be washed out entirely but washing the fleece will kill the bacteria and prevent it getting any worse until you decide to either embrace the yellowing, try to overdye it or throw it away.  

Yarns spun from Romney fleece have a wide range of uses with the finer yarns being used for shawls, mittens and other clothing and the coarser yarns are more suited to household items and upholstery.  

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared fibre in a box containing 50g each of four British Breeds but I forgot to get decent photos of it before I spun it.  It was a pleasure to spin with no rubbish in it, just as well prepared spinning fibre should be.

Spun to double knit weight I got 142m out of my 50g

My finished yarn is quite nice with some lustre.  My knitted piece for the project only took 12g/34m so I have some left to play with in the future.

Manx Loagthan Sheep

Carrying on with my British Breeds project my next breed is the Manx Loaghtan (pronounced Loch-tun) and is believed to be derived from a combination of Gaelic words, either lugh dhoan (mouse brown) or lhosht dhoan (burnt brown). Either could be true given the natural colour of this breed of sheep, a soft shade of brown that is called "moorit" and ranges from fawn to dark reddish brown.

As with most sheep, especially the coloured varieties, sunlight does tend to bleach the tips of the locks and makes the sheep look lighter in colour than the rest of the fleece.

This Manx Loaghtan has just been sheared and clearly shows a much darker colour fleece.

The Manx Loaghtan sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "At Risk" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there is between 900 and 1500 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 11th century.

Historically they are native to The Isle of Man, hence the name "Manx" and the soft brown "moorit" colour that the breed is well known for today used to be the rare colour, with white, grey and black being the dominant colours.  All that changed during a period of near extinction in the 1950's where numbers were reduced to just 43 individual sheep and now the "moorit" brown seems to be the only colour that has survived that event, although the lambs are born black and turn brown within a few weeks of birth.  There are a few small flocks of this breed outside of the Isle of Man but they are niche grazers and so the right grazing conditions need to be met in order to keep this breed.

Numbers fell by the 1950's due to the introduction of other hill breeds to the Isle of Man and despite efforts to save the breed it is not out of danger yet.  Some of these efforts have included the cancellation of the famous Isle of Man TT races (Tourist Trophy motorcycle races) in 2001, the year of a major outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth disease in the UK, which surrounds the Isle of Man but does not govern it.  Despite the fact that they had only ever previously been cancelled during WWII, since they started in 1907, and the fact that the races are very important to the economy of the self governing island bringing in approximately 40,000 visitors to the island to see the races, the islands government felt the risk to the sheep of contracting the disease from unwitting tourists was far too great to hold the event that year.  Also, in 2009, the European Union recognised the breed with a "Protected Designation of Origin" which is designed to help reconnect farmers with consumers and raise awareness of a unique product, crop or animal.

The Manx Loaghtan is a long legged, fine boned, very hardy primitive breed usually sporting 2 or 4 horns in both sexes and is one of the Northern European Short-Tailed breeds and are valued for conservation grazing as they like rough grazing such as hawthorn and coarse grasses, which then encourages native plants and wildflowers to return and studies on the Isle of Man, Ramsey Island and Bardsey Island show that there appears to be a connection between the presence of Manx Loaghtan and the ability of the Chough to survive.  As they graze and crop the vegetation it gives the birds access to surface-active and soil insects.  The dung they leave behind also attracts beetles and fly larvae which in turn are a food resource for the birds when the ground is hard or other insects are scarce.  When Manx Loaghtan numbers increase, so to Chough numbers, when they decrease the bird population also decreases.

Manx Loaghtan are a small breed of sheep with no wool on their dark face and legs.  They produce a smallish fleece that is in high demand with hand spinners.  Depending on the source of information, the staple length is between 2.5 and 5 inches long (6.5-13 cm long) and can be anything from 1.4-2.5 kilos in weight. 

This fleece can be picked and carded or you can comb if its long enough to.  Personally I go with wool combs all the way as that is my preferred choice of preparation as I prefer to spin worsted style over woollen style and I have never gotten the hang of hand carding. I really must get some proper tuition as its a little embarrassing for a hand spinner not to be able to card, if I can stand the noise of the process as I do find the noise of carding a little hard to bare.  

The Manx Loaghtan fleece can be overdyed but the base colour must be taken into account when choosing a colour.  There are two types of fleece within the breed, not on the same animal, one hairy and one woolly with the hairy one being more durable and the woolly one being much softer but it does have a good amount of bounce.  Its at its best when made into relative lightweight fabrics.  

I have bought this breed in as pre-prepared fibre from a fellow spinners de-stash back in May 2020 but the fibre was produced in 2013 by a supplier that I am familiar with.  The general consensus is that fibre deteriorates with age but I personally have rarely found this to be true.  What I did find with this fibre though were lots of small clumps of "rubbish" that, in my opinion, should not have made it into the finished braid of fibre and I had to remove this as I progressed and this meant that my finished yarn was 6g lighter due to the removal of the rubbish.

Spun to Sport Weight my finished yarn is 94g/251m

My finished yarn is lovely and soft and quite bouncy and I do love the unusual shade of brown.  My knitted piece for the project only took 22g/57m, which shows the difference in density with the Cotswold which used 22g/42m.  This difference in density could be attributed to the difference in the breeds fibres or it could be attributed to the difference in my spinning, as I am human and not a regimented machine.

Cotswold Sheep

I've decided to start off with some Cotswold, as I have some of this spun up already in sport weight, so that makes sense to me to use that to make my test samples for the knitted pieces for my throw.  I wrote blog posts at the time of spinning and these can be found here and here.  Sport weight is probably a good weight of yarn to use as all the different fleece types should be able to be spun at this weight without any issues as some breeds just can't be spun too finely and others can't be spun too thickly so sport weight is a good mid-weight yarn to aim for.

This is Angelo from the award winning Pickwick Flock owned by Rob Harvey Long of Malmesbury, Wiltshire and it is yarn I produced from his fleece that I have used for my sampler.

This photo I download from the internet and it shows off the fleece nicely.

The Cotswold sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "At Risk" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there is between 900 and 1500 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society.

Historically they are a descendent of sheep introduced to the Cotswold Hills by the Romans and by the middle ages the area was known as a centre of the English wool trade but as the wool market slowed down their popularity fell and by the end of WWI just a few flocks remained and by the 1950's the numbers had fallen even further.  Numbers have since risen but and the breed is currently at a stable position but is not out of danger yet.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 13th century.

The Cotswold is a fairly large, hardy breed and is one of the English Longwool breeds with a well developed forelock of curly fleece.  They stand tall and their bodies are quite long and their face and legs are white and free from wool.  The produce a heavy, lustrous fleece that is in high demand with hand spinners.  Depending on the source of information, the staple length is between 6 and 15 inches long (15-38 cm long) and can be anything from 4-10 kilos in weight. The majority are white but black and grey can also be found, although these are rare.

You can spin this fleece straight from the locks if you like or you can flick or comb them.  Personally I go with wool combs all the way.  The locks can also be used as they are to create novelty yarns by spinning the ends in and letting the lock fall free and dangly, the same can be done in weaving.  They are also often used to make doll's wigs.  The Cotswold fleece takes dye well and the lustrousness makes the colours really shine.  Its good for heavyweight items that need to endure a lot of wear such as rugs, bags and furnishings but if you spin it fine it is wonderful for lace as it produces very good distinct stitches.  I made lace with some of Angelo's fleece and you can see photos here.

When it came to knitting up my sample for my throw, it took me 3 attempts before I was happy with the chosen alphabet style, undoing each one and reusing the yarn.  The knack is being able to read what you have knitted, if you can't make out what it says then its useless. I used an old cross stitch design programme to make the charts for knitting the words.

This is the yarn that I used.

I am sure you can read what it says

My knitted piece took just 22g/42m of yarn and I haven't washed and blocked the knitted piece yet, I want to wait until I've made a good number of them but I've pinned it out to take a photo as without the pins it just rolls up on itself.  It is a fair size so I know that the finished throw is going to be massive but I'm OK with that.

I have a crazy idea

I've had an idea for a little while now and have been buying breed sample fibre boxes when I see them come up for sale at various fibre suppliers, spreading the cost out over this past year.  I haven't got many different breeds yet but its a start.

I want to make some kind of large sampler type blanket/throw type of thing using as many different sheep breeds that I can get my hands on and each knitted piece will feature that breeds name on it somehow and all done in the sheep's natural colours, I won't be using any dyed wool in this whatsoever.  I have a mix of British and Non-British breeds at the moment but given the number of breeds available, there are 57 different British breeds alone, I think it would be wise to make two blanket/throws, one for British and one for other breeds, otherwise this thing will be huge and too big to handle.  

I need to do a bit of sample knitting to find the right alphabet that will come out in the knitting but I'm hoping that won't take too long to sort and then I can get on with it.  It will be an epic project but I don't need to do it all at once, I can fit it in between other projects.

As part of this British Sheep Breeds sampler that I want to make I will take the opportunity to write a blog post about each breed as I spin the yarn.  Some breeds I will prepare from fleece and other breeds will be bought in already prepared as either roving or top, depending on what is available as a fair amount of the breeds are rare and also the fact that I couldn't cope with having full fleeces of so many breeds, the odd one or two maybe, if I have to go that route, but I really only need enough to make each knitted piece.

Due to the fact that I no longer purchase from a particular fibre supplier I will not be buying a fibre advent calendar like I have in the previous 2 years.  I've not sourced an alternative so I will use the money saved on that to start purchasing what I need for this breeds project.

The Big Experiment - finally finished!

So I have finally gotten around to dying the skeins that I wanted to dye using blue dye.  I got out my favourite Greener Shades dyes to discover that I hadn't got enough of the River Blue by itself so I added a bit of Coral Reef Aqua into the mix too to make up the dye powder weight needed to dye this at 0.5% dye rate, which is using 50% of the dye you would use to get the standard colour strength for the dye.  I wanted it to be slightly lighter so that the colours of the merino might stand out a bit more rather than potentially be obliterated by the dye.

The colourful Merino have not reacted with the blue dye like I expect it to but its still made an interesting yarn.

The oddments blend has taken the dye well and looks quite similar to the other 3 skeins, its just that the fibre content is very different.

The mini skein of just Jacob wool has produced an interesting variegated yarn too.