Sheep are great. They make wool, they make lamb chops and they make milk for cheese. They also produce cute little babies that make you go “awwwww…… wook at the wittle wamb….” With so many talents its understandable that some sheep would specialise.
So merinos specialise in producing fine wool, texels focus on being delicious and stinky-tasty-cheese sheep work on their Roquefort technique. Not every sheep can be great at everything, and that’s ok.
So when I recently tried some ‘heirloom breeds’ yarn, I was a bit sceptical. I thought that maybe there was a good reason the wool of some breeds is rarely used. Maybe it’s because their talents lie elsewhere (like in a pie).
Still – I love any excuse to buy new yarn so I selected Manx Loughtan and Swaledale yarns from Heirloom Naturals.
They are undyed, single breed yarns with very distinct characteristics. The Manx yarn has a dense, felted look and produces nice, fat stitches. The Swaledale yarn is kind of weird – with lots of long, coarse, brittle fibres poking out everywhere. It sheds a lot.
You can see in the picture above one of the coarse fibres branching out from the white Swaledale yarn.
They both knitted up fine, with the Manx being more robust and the Swaledale feeling a bit loosely plied. The Swaledale shed EVERYWHERE and after knitting for just ten minutes, I looked like a lamington.
I used the yarns together to make a pair of Ysolda Teague’s Cairn fingerless gloves.
Before washing, both yarns had a wonderfully sheepy smell. Like lanolin and pasture. After washing, they now smell mildly like hospital grade disinfectant. Weird.
My friend and colleague Patricia spent an hour pulling the coarse, loose hairs off the gloves because they were driving her nuts. They now look fine, but I would definitely not use the Swaledale again. It’s still shedding everywhere and doesn’t seem to have a lot of body.
The Manx I like – but I don’t often use brown so I might not get around to using it again.
Overall I’m happy I tried something new but unless our Swaledale friends are on the menu, I’ll stay away.
