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A short piece on wet felting in preparation for needle felting the finished piece. Felt has an ancient history. It has been found in Siberian tombs that date back to the 7th century BC and was used for clothing, saddle-blankets and yurts. One theory is that felt was discovered when Mongolian horsemen put fleece under their saddles. The friction and sweat created by riding caused the fleece to felt. This can be replicated by putting fleece into the bottoms of children’s wellingtons! When a wool jumper felts in the washing machine, it is caused by a combination of warm water, soap and particularly friction. The process of felting occurs when the overlapping scales on the surface of the wool fibres open and become interlocked, so when I make pieces of felt as the starting point for my needle felted pieces, I make this happen in a controlled way. When washing a raw fleece, I have to be especially careful not agitate the wool too much or it will felt and become unusable. I have a bamboo felting mat which resembles a giant Sushi mat on which I lay out the layers of raw fleece in different directions. I lay a piece of old net curtain over the top of the wool so that I can soak the wool with warm, soapy water without disturbing the fibres. I gently rub over the top of the net curtain until the fibres begin to knit together. I carefully remove the net curtain and tightly roll the bamboo mat. Then the hard work begins. I press and roll the mat 200 times, unroll the mat and carefully turn the piece of felt. I roll another 200 times, unroll and turn again ensuring that the piece of felt stays flat and shrinks evenly. In total, I roll every piece of felt 600-800 times so it is quite a shoulder workout. Once I have set up my work station for wet felting, I make a number of pieces of felt in different colours, including felted alpaca fibre. This behaves differently from wool because it is hair and does not have the same surface structure as wool. To felt alpaca, I lay it on top of a layer of wool so that the scales on the wool fibres trap the alpaca fibres into place. Once all my pieces of felt are finished, I rinse out the soap and hang them up to dry.

A short piece on the 'primitive' breeds of sheep found in the British Isles. This country has a huge variety of both climate and pasture types from the upland fell grazing through hill pasture to lush lowland grazing. Many of these areas are not suitable for growing crops, so sheep were bred to be specifically adapted to thrive on their home patch. This is one reason we have more breeds of sheep than any other country in the world (60+). British breeds were exported to the colonies to form the basis of new breeds developed to thrive there (as early as 1609 in to the USA and with the first fleet to Australia in 1788). Since 2018, I have been needle felting my way through the Rare Breeds Survival Trust’s Watchlist. One of my favourite types of sheep are what are sometimes called the “Primitives.” They are coloured breeds native to the Scottish islands with a very ancient history. They are either on the RBST Watchlist or are a RBST “success story.” They are: Soay; Boreray, North Ronaldsay, Castlemilk Moorit and Manx Loaghton. The success stories are Jacob, Hebridean and Shetland. In this article, I will look at the history of sheep in the British Isles, with a particular focus on the Primitives. Sheep are not native to Great Britain but were introduced here 6000 years ago from Asia and Europe. The most ancient breed in Britain is the Soay, descended from the wild Mouflon. These early sheep belong to the group called the Northern short-tailed sheep with only 13 vertebrae in their tails instead of the 22 that occur in other breeds. Many of these breeds are double coated, with an outer coat that sheds the rain and an inner warm coat. Their fleeces may be shed naturally in the summer or can be “rooed’ rather than shorn. Rooing means that the fleece can be pulled out by hand rather than cut with clippers. This is not painful for the sheep because it is done when the fleece is ready to shed. Every year the RBST monitors animals registered by each breed society in order to produce their Watchlist. RBST has a gene bank as an insurance policy. It contains both semen and embryos so that critically endangered species can be brought back from the brink and genetic diversity can be maintained even with very low numbers. We never know when we will need genetic material from what are now rare breeds because fashions and climates change. Also, in saving rare breeds, we do not know what disease resistance to as yet unknown threats we are also preserving. Factors influencing the decline of some sheep breeds In the Middle ages, wool was the backbone of Britain’s economy. However, from the sixteenth century onwards, demand for British wool decreased due to a focus on meat production. This lead to a decline in the breeds that had been bred specifically for the quality of their wool. British Wool collects grades and markets British wool on behalf of producers. Wool is graded so that similar qualities, not necessarily similar breeds, are sold together. Traditionally, coloured wool has not commanded a high price because it is more difficult to dye. This particularly affects the Primitives, with their huge range of colours. Since the focus of production moved to meat, sheep carcasses have become larger. Abattoirs also prefer their carcasses to be of a uniform size which makes the small primitive breeds unpopular. However, the RBST 2019 Primitive Produce Project highlighted the fact that these sheep are “small in size, big in flavour.” Also, with a move towards smaller quantities of better quality meat of known provenance, these smaller sheep may be exactly what we need! Demand for wool declined with the introduction of cotton in the 18th Century, and later synthetic fibres. However, we have come full circle: we now know that washing synthetic fibres releases micro-plastics into the waterways so returning to wearing fully natural, biodegradable fabrics is the future! Helpfully, the Winter 2020 issue of the Ark magazine (RBST’s magazine) had an item on the Primitive Produce project in which they spun, wove, knitted and felted all seven fibres. A summary of their conclusions is that for: Hand spinning: Hebridean and Boreray were the quickest and easiest; Shetland and Manx Loaghton gave the best yarn. Felt making: Shetland and some Hebridean were good for wet felting; Castlemilk Moorit and Manx Loaghton were good for needlefelting. My favourite fleece is Shetland because of its fineness and the huge range of colours it comes in naturally. The Derwent Flock near Keswick has a fleece barn worth visiting. (https://www.facebook.com/DerwentFlock/

Last year, I was invited to write a piece for the US facebook page, 52 weeks of sheep (https://www.facebook.com/groups/52weeksofsheep) about the British Longwool breed, the Leicester Longwool. Robert Bakewell (1725-1795) was a pioneer in systematic selective livestock breeding. He crossed the large, slow-growing sheep of the midlands with Lincolns and Ryelands (thought to have been raised by monks in Herefordshire as early as the 1300s) to create the New Leicester, later renamed the Leicester Longwool. The breed society was formed in 1893. Many modern breeds have Leicester Longwool ancestry, including the Lleyn, Wensleydale, Border Leicester, Ile de France and Corriedale. Robert Bakewell’s pioneering ideas spread rapidly across the world. George Washington acquired some New Leicester rams to improve his flock. They reached Australia in 1826. However, the New Leicesters later lost out to Spanish Merinos and became a rare breed across the world. They were extinct in the USA in the 1930s and 40s. More recently, Colonial Williamsburg imported some from Australia to establish a flock in 1990 and now there are several conservation flocks in the United States. The Leicester Longwool is a large, hardy, slow-growing and long-lived sheep (ewes weigh 80-100kg and rams 100-150kg). As with many of Robert Bakewell’s breeds, the real success has been in using the Leicester Longwool as a crossing sire. “Hybrid vigour” is key to the British lamb industry (see previous blog on Swaledales). Crossing two different breeds of sheep produces lambs with characteristics of both parents, but are larger and stronger than either. The Leicester Longwool is crossed with commercial or hill breeds to produce large lambs and hogget: meat from animals that are between one a two years old, so it has the tenderness of lamb and the full flavour of mutton. Hogget is a popular product from our slower growing rare breeds. The Leicester Longwool is a friendly sheep that can survive in a variety of climates, including northern England, so has recently become popular for land management projects where it has minimal impact on the land. Because the Leicester Longwool has such a fabulous fleece, it is often crossed with other breeds to improve the wool as well as the size of the carcass. The role of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust is to preserve these genetics as we never know when we will need these characteristics of beautiful lustrous wool and thriftiness in the future. Much of the reason for the decline in people wearing wool is due to the introduction of other fibres (cotton in the 18th Century, and later synthetic fibres). However, we have come full circle: we now know that washing synthetic fibres releases micro-plastics into the waterways so returning to wearing fully natural, biodegradable fabrics is the future! The Leicester Longwool is a rare breed with around 900 registered ewes in the UK. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust's 2020 campaign was “Love a Longwool” (https://www.rbst.org.uk/News/rbst-love-a-longwool) to raise their profile and promote the Longwool breeds for wool, meat and conservation grazing (https://www.rbst.org.uk/leicester-longwool). Rare breed status means that the wool is allowed to be sold privately and is very popular with hand spinners, with its long and silky, lustrous locks growing at around 3cm a month. It can be used for a wide variety of purposes from lace-weight yarn to carpets. Leicester Longwools are predominantly white, but black, dark brown and dark grey ones do occur and are increasingly popular for their naturally coloured wool. A separate register was established for them in 1984.

A short explanation of the sheep breeding pyramid and why the Swaledale is key. The Yorkshire Swaledale is very commonly seen sheep in the Lake District with its distinctive black face, white muzzle and curly horns (on both ewes and rams). They are the hardy moorland sheep of the Pennines. Their wool is used for tweeds, rugs and hand knitting. Like the Herdwick of the Cumbrian fells, they mature slowly but in recent years, with the development of the sheep-breeding pyramid in the UK, their value has increased considerably due to a key characteristic: they make excellent mothers. The sheep pyramid uses every type of land in the UK from fells to lowlands to produce the lamb consumed in and exported from this country. The Swaledale is a hardy fell sheep so is able to raise lambs on poor quality upland grazing. They are crossed with the less hardy but much larger Bluefaced Leicester creating a cross-bred sheep that is the breeding stock for the next level of the pyramid throughout the UK, the North Country Mule. Hybrid vigour is the tendency for the offspring of a cross between different breeds to be more vigorous, larger and more fertile than either of the parents. It is another key to the sheep-breeding pyramid. The second cross in the sheep pyramid uses a North Country Mule ewe and a specialised meat breed such as the Suffolk (with its floppy black ears) or the Dutch Texel (with its distinctive piggy face). The result of this cross is fast-growing lambs for the meat trade. This sheep pyramid also means that hill farmers get a better price for their older ewes who are no longer able to raise lambs on the fells. They are still valuable as experienced mothers who can raise lambs on better quality, lowland pasture. Farmers in Cumbria who have lowland pasture often keep Suffolks and Texels to produce the second tier of the pyramid. All the photos in this blog were taken locally.

Last summer, I was invited to write an article for the British Fibre Art magazine on what the fibre using community can do to help to preserve our rare breed sheep. I am a member of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust Cumbria Support Group and have been needle felting my way through the watchlist since 2018. 10% of rare breed sales goes to the RBST. The full article is attached here. A summary of what we can all do to help is here. What the fibre art community needs to do Become familiar with the breeds that are under threat (see Watchlist, above) Most breeds have a “breed society” with a Facebook page so once you have found the colour or type of fibre you want, contact the breed society and find out where you can buy the wool. If you don’t find a breed society on Facebook, you will certainly find a breeder. The RBST has farms (normally) open to visitors all over the country. Visit them and enjoy the experience of seeing these amazing animals first hand. Attend the wool-related shows such as Woolfest where you can talk to the breed societies, handle the wool and learn about the breeds. Hopefully there will be some later in the year. Seek out the people who have flocks of rare breed sheep and create a demand for the wool! Finally, a little bit of good news: the Government has accepted RBST’s arguments that native livestock needs supporting.The importance of our native breeds was recognised by Secretary of State George Eustice in his speech to the NFU conference: “Genetic diversity is what gives life itself resilience and we should protect and safeguard the genetic resource that exists in our fabulous native breeds.”

My work is featured in the March 2021 issue of Cumbria Life magazine.

The Herdwick is the native breed of the Lake District, championed by Beatrix Potter. It is thought to have been brought to this country by the Vikings over 1000 years ago. The name comes from the Old Norse word herdvyck meaning sheep pasture and is recorded in 12th Century documents. It is a minority breed with 95% of the 50 000 sheep living within a 14 mile radius of Coniston. They are a very hardy, able to live their entire lives on the fells with a very strong homing instinct: they never wander far from where they were born. The Cumbrian word for this is “hefted.” Lambs learn where home is from their mothers when they are turned out on the fells in late spring. For this reason, when a farm is sold, the sheep are sold with the farm. Herdwick wool is very course wool, belonging to the lowest price band of the Wool Marketing Board both because of its courseness and because it is not white. Herdwick wool on the sheep naturally sheds water and dries more quickly than many wools - essential for surviving on the fells. Farmers pay more to have their sheep shorn than they receive for the wool, but shearing is essential for the health of the sheep. Off the sheep, it is used for carpets(https://www.wocc.co.uk) and recyclable, naturally fire retardant insulation (https://www.thermafleece.com), but more recently, the better quality wool has begun to be made into Herdwick tweed (https://www.herdwick.co.uk/herdwick-tweed which is naturally water repellant. Poorer quality wool is mixed with bracken harvested from the fells and made into fertiliser (https://www.dalefootcomposts.co.uk) and some is even used for Lake District footpath reparis on boggy gound. There is even a company combining Herdwick wool with fibreglass to make furniture! (https://www.solidwool.com). Herdwick lamb and mutton have a very distinct taste, and were even eaten at Queen Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation banquet. In 2013, Lakeland Herdwick meat received a Protected Designation of Origin from the European Union (like Champagne and Burgundy). Herdwick lambs are born in late April or May when the weather in the Lake District is warmer. They are usually born black. When they are a year old (a “hogg), they are dark brown but in between, they gradually acquire their distinctive white face. As they mature, their coats become lighter, ranging from dark grey to almost white. Herdwick ewes are “polled” (have no horns); rams (or “tups) usually have horns. I use locally sourced Herdwick wool for my Herdwick sheep.