Description

Drum carded for hand spinners or felt makers, British Shetland fleece from ‘Agnes’ one of our own small flock of much loved Shetland sheep, who are conservation grazers for our community orchards and biodiverse chalk grassland. Agnes came to us an incredibly friendly lamb still with her Mum and has now lambs of her own, her very light grey fleece is extremely soft. We have specifically chosen her fleece to dye and drum card for hand spinners as it has a medium crimp, good staple length and base colour for dyeing. ‘Margo’ is also one of our original 4 sheep and another grey katmoget ewe, she has a wonderfully soft light grey fleece with high crimp. ‘Annie’ is another one of our friendliest sheep, when we bought our second batch of Shetlands she was the only one who had already been named as she had had to be bottle fed. Annie has a soft dark brown fleece, the tips of which fade out in sunlight, as she gets older her fleece is becoming lighter but the Chocolate in the Chocolate and Lime is Annie’s natural colour.
We blade shear each of our sheep by hand (which allows us to wait until the fleece is ready), the fleeces are then carefully sorted (plant matter removed) and lower grade wool separated for use as packing material. Each fleece is gently but thoroughly washed in well water and eco-friendly Unicorn power scour, dried in the fresh air, put through our antique wool swing picker to open up the locks and remove any remaining vegetable matter and then either kept as the natural fleece colour or naturally dyed by us at our small outside dye house in Oxfordshire, using well water and plant dyes, many of which are grown or gathered by us in a sustainable way from the organic Estate on which we are based. When we do use imported dyes we source these directly, or from a company with a strong ethical sourcing policy.
After dyeing the fleeces are picked over a second time and then either packed for felt makers or drum carded by hand ready for spinning.
We have a policy of buying no new packaging material for use in posting out parcels, we re-use old packaging gathered from other local businesses, individuals and schools. We hope you will enjoy receiving your parcel, whatever shape and size it is, knowing that it has a little less impact on the environment.