Looking Back

2014 has been a year of learning and experiences, but one where time became most valued.  We've had births and we've had death.  I'm sure someone has eloquently written a quote about the times when you have most going on to blog about, are the times when you have least time to do it.  But I'm sure you get the picture.

In retrospect farming sheep and a lot of poultry, running Woolsack, starting a business, everything we've been doing on the farm, keeping up with family and old friends and new ....... well, the blog was pretty high up the list of things I didn't have time for.  I've also not done anywhere near as much spinning as I'd have liked, nor growing food, well this list could get very long!

However I've no regrets, and despite the considerable physical challenges and having to learn so much (not least farm paperwork!) I'm glad this is where I am now.  There will be some changes next year, learning from our experiences of this year, but I will keep running Woolsack and even bringing back the events page and adding a new page I've been researching.  As for the farm, well I will try and find time to blog about the sheep because a LOT has happened there.

Orkney is a pretty magical place.  Even when coping with being icebound as we were on 27 & 28 December when the entire farm was covered in sheet ice, (anyone for downhill skating?) we could look up and see the promise of longer days and sunshine.

So now, time to leave 2014 at sunset with images of young Borerays on the moor and the Boreray Boys in the field at the top of the hill.

The Boreray Project part 5 - NOT the Final Chapter!

So the story continues from September 2011 when the Boreray fleeces went to Natural Fibre Company for processing and spinning.  By February 2012 I'd heard the exciting news that it had been processed in the mill and had spun into a very nice aran weight, a natural oatmeal colour as the majority white fleeces had been coloured by the few coloured fleeces.  It was a 'robust' yarn that you might not want to wear next to your skin, but looked as if it would knit well for cables and texture.  Here it is!

The hat is the special pattern that went with the packs of yarn for the people who purchased some of the 360 balls of yarn. There was great publicity for the yarn and for Boreray sheep and the price included a donation. This, together with additional donations linked to the aran yarn meant cheques for £316 were sent to each of RBST and the Soay & Boreray Society to support the genetics research into Boreray sheep.
I took a long time to decide what to knit with my precious 4 balls, and then to find the right pattern.  Knitting has now finally started and my project is here.  Other Boreray yarn projects can be found on Ravelry.  One of my favourites is this wonderful knitted and felted Boreray IPhone Hoodie

Those of you who have read the previous chapters in this story will remember our excitement at the Pooh Party when we discovered the fine undercoat fibres and how we separated them out after advice from Sue Blacker that their absence wouldn't affect the quality of the Boreray aran yarn.

Initially, being spinners, we had fond thoughts of handspinning it ourselves - yes, I can hear other spinners drooling at the thought.  Sue Blacker though was very supportive of a tentative suggestion I made.  Yes, if I could give NFC the fine fibres already dehaired and if together we could find enough very fine Soay so that together it made the minimum 20kg, then NFC would explore spinning it into a laceweight yarn.  I'm very grateful that at that point I wasn't lynched by my spinning friends, although they were very happy for me to tackle the mammoth dehairing task on my own.

Time for a quick look at double coated fleece.  This subject is covered much better in a book that rarely leaves my side.  The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook by Deb Robson & Carol Ekarius  The Boreray information starts on page 154.

This is some of the fleece that we separated out.  At first glance it doesn't look any different, but there is no kemp in it and at the base of the locks are the fine fibres.  Kemp can be removed manually from fleece but it can involve tweezers and rather more patience that I'd even want to have.

Here is the process starting with the complete lock on the left.  You then grasp the base of the lock in one hand, the tips of the long hairs in the other and gently ease the hairs from the lock.  The photo on the right shows the 2 types of fibre separated.

 With the Boreray fleece this wasn't that difficult to do, it's just that there were two sacks of selected fleece to work through.

Note the two green net bags next to the sacks.  This was my ultimate sacrifice.  In them was the fine fibre from the very first box of Boreray that I'd bought for myself at the beginning of 2011, together with the very finest of the Light Phase (golden) Soay that I'd also separated out for myself.  We're talking handspinning paradise in those two bags.  Without them though there wasn't enough fibre for NFC to spin the laceweight.

Read on though and you'll find out why I'm no longer weeping about this loss.

So the system I had was to sit in a comfortable chair with a sack in front of me, apron on lap, 'hair' box to one side and 'fluff' box to the other.  I'd take a lock of fleece, remove the hair and any other unwanted bits, drop the hair in one box (on the right) and let the fluff float down into the other (on the left).  For a few weeks whole evenings passed in this way.

This though was the result, and this photo does actually manage to show this magical 'fluff' that had got us all so excited.  The 'fat' looking dark fibres are actually very fine and soft, this is just a very magnified photo.  Sadly my achievement at getting this in focus wasn't matched by my remembering to include a scale in the photo.

Then, just before Wonderwool Wales in April 2012 I received some exceedingly exciting news from Sue Blacker.  Without me knowing there had been some experimenting going on at the Natural Fibre Company and they had found a way to separate the hair from the fine fibre in the mill.  By now I'd done around two thirds of the fleece, may have been slightly losing the will to live, and at the same time was being very busy with the Woolsack 2012 cushions project, so this was more exciting news than you might think.  Wine was hastily put in the fridge for the evening and the fibre boxes and bags were closed.

The fibre and fleece was handed over to Sue at Wonderwool and then, late in the evening of 29th October 2012 I got an email titled 'good things come to those who wait'.  The Natural Fibre Company had done it!  Sue had a ball of the laceweight yarn in her hand.

 There wasn't enough Boreray on its own so it was an obvious choice to blend some very fine Soay fibre, Soays being the other sheep breed still found on the St Kilda Islands.  The name for the yarn had to be 'St Kilda'.  I don't know how much of the process of producing this amazing laceweight yarn is 'trade secrets', but it might be worth following Sue Blacker's blog, since her experience with the wool from the Boreray sheep would be a fascinating read.

As you can see, the white and coloured Boreray, the 'golden' Soay and some very fine dark Soay that Sue was able to source came together to give this fabulous colour.  Sue rushed a ball up to me and I took it to show my spinning friends at our spinning group on 1 December.

Yes, we had missed out on spinning the fibre ourselves, but as you can see we were all delighted with the spun yarn.



This isn't all though.  I thought that it would be even more special if there could be a special pattern designed for this unique, one-off yarn.  It had to have a link to St Kilda of course, despite any difficulties caused by the islands having been evacuated in 1930.  There are some very special images though of the people of St Kilda which can be viewed as stills and film on the National Library of Scotland Scottish Screen Archive  On one page you can view the whole of the film, St Kilda - Britain's Loneliest Isle

I've just received permission from National Library of Scotland to post here a still photo from the St Kilda section of The Island Tapes DVD  If you look at the film on the website you'll see most of the women are wearing these woven shawls, some in a plaid design.

One thing immediately becomes apparent when viewing these images.  They didn't wear knitted shawls outside, so there are no patterns to reference or try to copy from photographs.  I did though know someone who has a wealth of knowledge about knitting and textiles in the Scottish Isles, and is also an experienced designer.  If anyone could create a special design that reflected and was inspired by the people and textiles of St Kilda from nearly a century ago, then it was Elizabeth Lovick.  I was so pleased when she agreed to take on this special challenge.  The story behind the design will be much better told by Liz, so keep an eye on her blog - Fibre Life In Orkney

ETA You can read about Liz's research into St Kilda and see some wonderful photos in her latest blog post here and the pattern can be purchased here, or as a download version here.

I will give a little hint though - this is part of the scarf pattern, before blocking.  As I have already discovered, not only is St Kilda a wonderful yarn to knit with, but it blocks beautifully.

So, this should be the end of the story.  How a group of Boreray enthusiasts, some spinning friends, Sue Blacker and the staff of the Natural Fibre Company and the designer, Elizabeth Lovick came together and produced two new and unique yarns to raise the profile of our rarest breed of sheep while giving non-spinners the opportunity to experience the wool in two very different yarns.

The pattern should be appearing on the Blacker Yarns website within a few days, even though virtually every ball of St Kilda has already been sold.  I believe there are a very few left and the sole stockist is Kathy's Knits in Edinburgh.  If you want to have one of the last few balls, then just contact them

This is not the end though!  Natural Fibre Company has been able to work with those who have Boreray sheep and are now getting fleece from them each year, enough to produce a small batch of St Kilda on a regular basis.  Limited quantities of fleece means a little very fine Shetland has to be added, but having seen this first of many annual batches at Unravel last weekend, I'm delighted to report that it still has the special St Kilda feel and look about it.  Even more excitingly, the colour will be different each year since it depends entirely on the colours of the fleeces they can source.  So this first of many batches has come out a beautiful soft, lighter colour than the original.  The two work together beautifully though and I'll be knitting my own St Kilda shawl using both yarns.  The new St Kilda is already available through Blacker Yarns

Here are the two yarns together.

When I started this whole 'Boreray project' I didn't really have any hopes other than to enable my non-spinning friends from the Blacker & Beyond with FFSB Group on Ravelry to experience yarn from  Britain's rarest breed of sheep.  I also hoped it might raise awareness of the breed.


I didn't dream that it would lead to two very different, rather special, yarns and create a new, ongoing, market for Boreray fleeces, some of which had previously been discarded.  So now I am going to dare to dream that one day the Boreray sheep will no longer be critically endangered.

The Boreray Project part 4 - The day that became known as the Pooh Party

 The task - to sort through a mountain of Boreray fleece and separate out the fibre which could be sent to Natural Fibre Company

The challenge - to do this in less than a week.

I contacted my friends and bribed them with promises of food and the chance to play with my English Wool Combs and on Sunday 28 August 2011 they came to the house for the day, complete with aprons.  I had initially thought that we'd be removing the thickest of the hair and kemp, along with a bit of skirting, so I sold them on the fun of a De-Hairing Party.  (Spinners are robust people.  Spinning wheels have parts called mother-of-all, maiden, orifice, lazy-kate, so calling an event a De-Hairing party was guaranteed to get people involved)

How wrong I was!

We started off with moving the bags of fleece to one side of the lounge and putting a white sheet on the carpet.  The intention was for Carol and I to empty one bag at a time onto the sheet, pick out the nice bits of fleece, and carry them to the table in the sunny kitchen where the de-hairers, Sue, Ros & Alison were ready with their smiles.

 But then we found the felted bits of fleece, the 'rough as a badger's arse' kempy, hairy britch bits, the thistles, grass, hay........ and the pooh.  We had a lot of fleece to get through.  Here's a small selection.

Time to rethink.  We all had a good look at what we actually had and realised that the hair wasn't the issue for most of the fleece.  Once the fleece had been 'cleaned up' and the heavily kempy and felted parts removed, what was left would make a nice yarn with the remaining hair being part of the character of the yarn.  It was really exciting seeing 'cleaned-up' fibre emerging from the sacks of fleeces and appreciating how much character and individuality it had.  This wasn't a breed that could easily be confused with other breeds of sheep just by looking at the fleece.

We did however keep finding little sections with the superfine undercoat.  It just seemed such a shame to include this with the rest of the fleece to be swallowed up in the final yarn.  There was so little that taking it out of the Boreray yarn fleece wouldn't affect the character and softness of the yarn.  The decision was made to separate it out.

So now we're all happy again.  Very happy indeed, because the only thing we could think of to do with this superfine undercoat was to hand-spin it.  So we could all share it out and have fun spinning it.  There was talk of making some of our hand-spun yarn available for knitters, fundraising for Borerays and RBST.... We thought of a lot of things, but mostly we thought about the joy of hand-spinning some incredible laceweight Boreray yarn.

We cracked on with sorting out the fibre for NFC and got that done before the end of the day.  Just time to start de-hairing the fine undercoat we'd kept separate.

Now it's really difficult to photograph very fine fibre, unless you're someone like Deb Robson.  You can see her super photographs of Boreray on p156 of the Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook  This is my attempt to show some of the Boreray fibre.  

On the left against the red background is a lock of hair fibre that has been eased from a lock of fleece.  Top on the right is what's left.  The dark coloured fibres are kemp.  Borerays have white and coloured kemp.  The vertical dark line is the 'rise'.  This is the natural break between the fleece from the old year and the new fleece.  There are some scurfy skin cells along the rise and you can see that the new year's growth has more kemp than the old fleece that has been sheared or cut off the sheep.

The bottom right hand image is a close up of part of the image above it.  The slightly creamy coloured 'cloud' is the fine undercoat.  Too fine to even see the individual fibres.  It's easier to identify it by feel - just imagine what the finest undercoat on a mouse might feel like, and you're in the right area.

So that was how we finished a day we'll never forget.  Sitting there with woolsacks full of the very characterful Boreray fleece in colours ranging from white to dark brown and prepared all ready for the Natural Fibre Company.  Most importantly we were over the 20kg.  And just time to sit round the table and start de-hairing the fine undercoat.

A few days later I took the Boreray fibre with me to British Wool Weekend and at the end of a tiring but most enjoyable weekend, Sue Blacker had the job of fitting it all into her car to take down to Cornwall.  We'd also found time over the weekend to talk about the few kg of fine Boreray and another plan was hatched.

The Boreray Project part 3 - what about the knitters?

So 2011 had seen spinners enjoying the experience of handling and spinning Boreray fleece.  But long before I started spinning I was a knitter who loved using wool knitting yarn from different breeds of sheep.  It's like cheese - why eat just mild Cheddar when there are so many different varieties of cheese to enjoy and use for different purposes?

Looking back through my email folders I see that by the end of 2010 I hadn't been able to find any sort of Boreray knitting yarn for sale.  I was learning more and more about Boreray sheep as I was able to track down one after another of the special people who support this breed and keep the gene pool viable.  At times it felt like following a trail of crumbs.  Many of them are smallholders with the inevitable challenges on their time.  Slowly though a list was growing and an idea was germinating.

I posted this on Ravelry in April 2011 in reply to a query about the bags of Boreray fleece for Wonderwool Wales:

It’s quoted that there are fewer than 300 registered breeding ewes - the problem isn’t just tracking down who has some Boreray sheep, it’s getting hold of the fleece. Because they shed naturally, and that is the preferred method of getting a good finish for showing, there aren’t a lot of them being shorn.

Then you add in that it’s not always convenient for the owners to shear at the optimum time for a good fleece, or in optimum conditions. For the price the fleeces fetch atm it’s often not worth packaging them up to sell - some owners do have fleece lying around that you can buy if you go to the farm/smallholding, but many of our rare breeds of sheep - well, the fleece just gets dumped. (yes, I couldn’t believe it when I heard it from a member of RBST!) I’d assumed these rare breed fleeces would be extra valuable.

I’ve got a little personal project that I’m trying to get off the ground and if it works - big IF - then there may be for the first time a small batch of commercial Boreray yarn spun for knitters and this may lead to it becoming financially viable for Boreray owners to have a system to get their fleeces in the right condition to a mill, and this should lead to some being available for spinners as well. I’m risking a bit of my money and rather more of my time (I may be driving round the country personally picking up all these fleeces!) but if I can make the experiment work this first year enough that it can be shown to be financially viable for the owners in the future if I’m not ‘financing’ it - well I live in excited hope of what this could mean for the sheep, knitters and spinners in the future.

I'd already spoken to Sue Blacker, Natural Fibre Company, about what would be required for NFC to spin a batch of Boreray yarn if I could get enough fleece together.  The answer was 20kg as a minimum!  There was also the additional need to ensure that none of the fleece came from sheep that had been treated with certain fly-strike treatments before shearing or gathering of the fleece.  This is because NFC is licensed for organic production which also affects the non-organic wool they produce.  The fleeces would also be coming from people who were not used to supplying fleeces for processing, so they could well need sorting, skirting and having excessive amounts of vegetable matter (VM) removing before they could be sent to NFC.

So this was the challenge - to get 20kg of suitable fleece to NFC!
In March I started emailing and telephoning every Boreray owner I could locate.  I've no doubt that some of them must have thought I was a little crazy.  They were located in Scotland, Wales and the north of England and all were very busy people.  Somehow I had to persuade them to find the time to collect their fleeces and if possible to package them up to post to me.  I wanted to make sure none of them would be out-of-pocket for any postage or other costs and where possible I collected the fleeces myself.

 

A welcome bonus from those fleeces I collected is that I got to meet some of the Borerays and their owners and came to appreciate the delightful and individual characters in this breed.  'Boring' is not a word that could ever be applied to them!

Then I had the excitement of parcels arriving and opening them up to see what sort of fleeces were inside.  I quickly realised that, even though rams are moved between flocks for tupping to carefully increase genetic diversity, each flock's fleece is a little different.

Sometimes I got boxes, sometimes well wrapped bags and sometimes I filled the car.

 By August the house was being taken over - well the lounge anyway ;-)

Now the challenge was to get all this fleece sorted and ready to go to NFC before British Wool Weekend on 3 September when I'd be able to hand it over to Sue Blacker to be taken down to the mill in Cornwall.

Time to call in a few friends!

The Boreray Project part 2 - Sharing the fun with spinners

Part 1 of the Boreray story is here

So, March 2011 and I had a big box of fleece.  An exceedingly big box for a newish spinner!  The obvious thing was to share it round my spinning friends.

I sent some to Barbro in Finland and she used her skills and experience to spin the different types of Boreray fibres and wrote a fascinating blog post about it.

Wonderwool Wales was coming up and every year Amber and her Ravelry helpers organise a Raverly activities area where Ravelry members can meet friends and money can be raised for Air Ambulance.  I decided that a great way to share round the Boreray fleece & raise money for Air Ambulance would be to have bags of the fibre for people to take in return for a donation.

I skirted the fleeces and sorted the unfelted & cleanish parts of the raw fleece into 100g bags in 3 categories: Fine & Surprisingly Soft, With Character & Kemp, Robust Character

 Keeping back some mixed fleece for myself, we had 22 bags which proved very popular.

I then swapped some of this fleece with Marjorie in return for a carding lesson at Stanhope Spinning Group.  This was an incredibly fortuitous thing to do since Marjorie is a very good weaver as well as a spinner and she spun and wove a Boreray scarf!

This is the spun yarn, together with some that Marjorie dyed using lichens.

The scarf was woven with a silk warp and the the undyed and dyed Boreray woven to create this beautiful design.  The final scarf, although having even the more robust fibres in it, is very soft and quite beautiful.

At British Wool Weekend in Harrogate in September 2011, Marjorie brought her scarf to show Sue Blacker of the Natural Fibre Company

In the meantime I'd had a go at spinning up some of the finer fibres I'd separated out, spinning it as fine as I could manage then!

At the end of September 2011 I was at Masham Sheep Fair and Freyalyn brought along the yarn she'd spun from one of the Wonderwool Wales' bags of Boreray - rather more impressive than my efforts!

The Boreray Project part 1 - Discovering the Fleece

Boreray sheep are the UK's rarest sheep breed.  They are classified by the RBST as critically endangered.

So why have these sheep been a presence in my life over the past 2 years that is second only to Woolsack?  Well actually, the person to blame is Felicity Ford (Felix on Ravelry) and I'm pretty sure she's forgotten a post she made in the Blacker & Beyond with FFSB group that I help to run on Ravelry.

Felix wanted Boreray yarn and I got hunting and found out that there wasn't any to be had.  Now one of the clever things you can do on Rav is a search of forum posts, and the Boreray search in B&B has really brought back memories for me.  Helen posted that she knew of a flock of Borerays and sent me contact details.  I followed this up and in February 2011 a box of Boreray fleece was on its way to me.  I wrote in a post that I was expecting that it could be used for felt and I might make a Woolsack felted cushion with it.

We had Boreray as Sheep of the Week in B&B, so I did some research and came up with some links.
Sheep of St Kilda
Gaerllwyd Flocks 
Soay & Boreray Sheep Society 

I was fascinated by Boreray sheep - and then the box of fleeces arrived!

  Fortunately the same day my March 2011 copy of Yarnmaker Magazine arrived with a very comprehensive article, written by Elizabeth Lovick, about how to assess a fleece. There is also information about assessing fleeces written by Elizabeth in her Starting Spindle Spinning CD   (Detailed instructions with plenty of photos showing you want to look for when buying a fleece on the hoof or in a ball. A table of the different types of breeds of British sheep and their main uses to the hand spinner is included)

Using this information I started looking closely at the fleece from the box and realised it was something rather special and exciting.  There was everything from the roughest, hairiest, most kempy fibre you could imagine to fibre finer than anything I'd seen or handled before.  These little sheep had within each fleece a fibre suitable for every purpose.