Calling all knitters

Today's post is a little different as I want to tell you all about sheep. Not any sheep, these are rare breed sheep and their beautiful fleeces. 

These beauties are called Ryland sheep and live near Coldstream in the Scottish Borders and belong to a friend of mine. These girls are his first venture into the world of sheep farming and a few weeks ago he sent some of their fleeces off to be spun and he has asked me to pass on the news to you all.  As you can imagine waiting to see your first batch of home grown wool arrive back from the mill has been a really exciting time, but poor chap, he has had to endure some real leg pulling recently, as his new favourite after dinner topic of conversation is somewhat of a specialist subject! Never mind what your thoughts on the Scottish Independence debate might be - just tell us how many kilos of wool you can get from a sheep then Simon? 

Whilst Ryland fleeces are often sought after by hand spinners because of quality and texture of their wool, Simon's fleeces were sent off to the Halifax Spinning Mill a few weeks ago to be washed, carded and spun for him. No one was really sure quite what would return as the flock is a mixture of whites and coloureds (I am told that is a technical term?) but look how beautiful this grey tone is that has come back. 

The finished product looks fantastic and just oozes everything pure and natural.

Whilst Simon is really enjoying his new hobby, taking up knitting is probably a step too far for him so he is offering this first batch of pure Ryeland Rare Breed wool for sale.

The wool has been spun into double knitting wool and is in skeins of 120 grammes each . I think this is an absolute find for anyone who is a real wool addict, as I know you guys are just as bad as us fabricaholics, so if you are interested in purchasing some of this special wool please leave a comment below and I will get back to you immediately. As you can imagine, because this is the first few fleeces from this herd quantities are limited so if you are interested I think you will need to get in pretty quickly. The price per skein is £16 plus P+P and payment will be required by Paypal please, but I can supply all those details to you direct in due course.

The good news is the second round of shearing will take place very soon and this time the plan is to spin the white and "coloured" wools separately so the next batch will give us a natural white as well as a really deep dark tone which should be fantastic. A couple of the sheep are a really gorgeous chocolate colour, so I think this wool will be well worth investing in.

And as if that was not enough Simon has a small herd of Alpacas, so its watch this space as far as their soft and cosy fleeces are concerned.

I do hope to hear from you for this limited edition and if you have any questions at all please do not hesitate to ask. And of course feel free to share a link to this post if you think it suits your more specialised blog. As you can see I am not that up on Marketing but I know a beautiful product when I see one.