Might you be interested in some Bowmont x Shetland fibre?

 Here is Shade, my last remaining Bowmont x Shetland sheep.  

At 15 years old, Shade is now quite an old lady.  She was originally one of three - Whiter, Shade and Pale - and, though I use their fleeces extensively, I still do have rather a lot to get through. Much is already processed to carded sliver (for use by me!), some is currently at the mill, some is in my workshop waiting to be washed, and some has had the thick of the dirt and lanolin rinsed out of it.

It’s this last lot of fibre I’m hoping might be of interest to you.  Shade is the daughter of one of the original Bowmont sheep, developed by the Macaulay Institute at Sourhope Farm in the Bowmont Valley.  Her mother was crossed with a Shetland tup, in an attempt to introduce some colour.  The colour didn’t really happen, so the fibre is white.  It is beautifully fine, despite being crossed back with a Shetland.

Below is a photograph of the Bowmont Shetland fibre alongside some black Bluefaced Leicester, just to give you an idea of how fine it really is.

It isn’t perfectly washed.  The fibre is so fine that the tips get very dirty.  However, even without further washing,  just teasing the tips apart is sufficient to overcome this. The tips are sound. 

Anyway, I’m placing some of it in my online shop, so if you are interested in spinning or making felt from this completely unique fibre, just head over there.

Grand Day Out

 Earlier in the year we were visited by a lovely team from Channel 5, filming Susan Calman’s Grand Day Out.   There was, unquestionably a stand out star and that was Barbara.  Here is Barbara this evening, defying the elements in the wild, wet, windy North Pennines.

Barbara and co. have done an excellent job of stocking my online shop, so pieces of Barbara and all my other lovelies can be found there.

#GrandDayOut

Lifecycles

Since I have failed to post since the end of winter I realised I could almost justify a ‘lifecycle of a phone case’ sort of post.

So here are the sheep, still in their winter fleeces.

And here is the hay meadow that the sheep eat in order to grow their fleeces.

The fleeces, clipped for me this year by Farmer Sam.  A relief to not have to do it myself!

Kester, naked!

And more naked sheep.  Conor Murphy in the foreground, with Clement peering over his back.

Out in the fields.  Back in the haymeadow, to be more precise.  The regrowth has already begun.  This is Alder in the foreground.

Finished phone cases, also used as spectacle cases, drying in front of a woodpile.

Sheep in snow

 

Today there is a very light dusting of snow, but I have to confess that this was taken a couple of weeks ago - the deceptively regal-looking Conor Murphy enjoying a bright winter’s day.

Detectorists

If you’re a lover of Mackenzie Crook’s ‘Detectorists’ (and, let’s face it, if you have a beating heart, why wouldn’t you be?) you might be amused to learn that we have our very own Andy and Lance.

Several months ago an intrepid pair from Whitley Bay sought ‘permissions’ to detect in our fields. Since then, they’ve been six or seven times and we now have our very own ‘finds’ table.

If they bump into me, they hand me their muddy finds, otherwise they take them home to wash, then return them on their next expedition. On these occasions I get a phone-call from ‘Lance’ listing their finds. “We’ve got part of a spoon, a toy car, a ring pull, a steel toe-cap, three buttons of various sizes……..”

Honestly, I feel as though I’ve woken up in Danebury!