The Hardy Little Herdwick
As a hand spinner you quickly become aware of the differing qualities of wool from our many and varied native sheep breeds. From the softness of the Suffolk to the lustrous length of the Wensleydale there are so many beautiful yarns you can create. These sheep live in lowland pastures, in temperate climates and their wool protects them more than adequately. The Herdwick on the other hand is a mountain sheep and it’s fleece is designed to withstand the worst of a high altitude winter. Those creators of beautiful soft yarns don’t want this fleece.
The Herdwick is believed to have originated in Scandinavia but has been on the Lakeland fells for centuries. It is regarded as the most hardy of the native breeds and survives on the highest ground. The lambs are born black and the mature fleece becomes grey through the increase of white ‘kemp’ fibres. The uses of Herdwick wool are carpets and insulat
When a friend offered me a couple of fleeces from her new flock I accepted without hesitation. As a hand spinner it is an occupational hazard. Whenever you are offered fleece, the voice in your head that is trying to remind you of all those sacks of unprocessed fleece sitting in your workshop, is silenced by the thought of more!
Before I can use a fleece I spread it on the grass and remove the unsavoury and unuseable parts in a process called skirting. The fleece is rinsed gently in tubs of cold water to remove sweat, grit and other grime that has attached to the fibres during the past year. Once clean it can be carded, brushed with wire combs to straighten the fibres and tease out any remnants of straw or bracken.
The fleece can then be dyed, spun and plied. I use artificial dyes as they give me a more reliable result and because, as long as you buy the right ones, they comply with Oeko-Tex Standard 100 environmental regulations. I like to dye the unspun fibres so that I can mix the colours as I spin. I mix the colours as I go and then in the plying process, they mix themselves again. The first yarn spun is called a single and I spin two singles together to balance the twist of the yarn. If I didn’t do this, my knitted product would not hang straight.
And the end result? I knit wall hangings with my beautiful colours of Herwick wool and embroider onto them the trees and flowers of the mountains. I use a variety of oddments to embellish the Herdwick but all are pure wool, many are handspun and all are my dye samples.
And then I add the words. The colours of the knitted fabric suggest the design and the embroidered design suggests the poetry. Among my favourite poets are Emily Bronte, W B Yeats, Philip Larkin and Robert Frost but I can often spend hours reading through books to find the right words. Once the lines have been selected, I burn them into wood from reclaimed potato boxes. The pyrography tool engraves a burnt line into the wood which is tactile and permanent.
