British Breeds

The wonderful British Breeds yarn is the perfect yarn for Fairisle and stranded colour work knitting. The melange effect of the colours help produce the beautiful Fairisle patterns synonymous with Marie Wallin designs.

British Breeds is a 100% Wool yarn blended from four different British sheep breeds. Worsted spun in Devon by John Arbon Mill, the wool fibre from each breed adds a certain characteristic to the yarn; Bluefaced Leicester adds the beautiful softness, Exmoor Horn adds the softness too but this sheep produces a white fleece therefore adding a ‘cleaness’ to the blended tops making for more successful dyeing. Romney adds the strength and slight lustre and Zwartbles adds the bounce or springiness. To produce the yarn, the Bluefaced Leicester, Exmoor Horn and Romney wool fibres are first blended together and then dyed into various coloured tops. These coloured tops are then blended together using a ‘recipe’ to create each of the base colours. Each colour base is then blended with the undyed Zwartbles fibre creating the amazing mélange effect. Once the yarn is spun it is sent to Edward Hill’s Ltd in Bradford to be steam relaxed and balled into 25g balls. The steam finishing ‘opens up’ the yarn creating the full, light appearance and handle.