Marie Wallin British Breeds

Marie Wallin took two years to develop this beautiful, soft, bouncy 4 ply yarn. Worsted spun in Devon,BRITISH BREEDS is available in 20 lovely shades, which all work well together in Fair Isle knitting. Each shade is also a beautiful individual colour for single colour knitting.

BRITISH BREEDS is made from four different British sheep breeds: Bluefaced Leicester, Exmoor Horn, Wensleydale and Zwartbles. The wool fibre from each breed adds a certain characteristic to the yarn... Bluefaced Leicester adds the beautiful softness, Exmoor Horn adds the softness too but this sheep produces a white fleece therefore adding a ‘cleaness’ to the blended tops making for more successful dyeing. Wensleydale adds the strength and lustre and Zwartbles adds the bounce or springiness. To produce the yarn, the Bluefaced Leicester, Exmoor Horn and Wensleydale wool fibres are first blended together and then dyed into various coloured tops. These coloured tops are then blended together using a ‘recipe’ to create each colour. Each colour base is then blended with the undyed Zwartbles fibre creating the lovely mélange effect. Once the yarn is spun it is sent to Edward Hill’s Ltd in Bradford to be steam relaxed and balled into 25g balls. The steam finishing ‘opens up’ the yarn creating the full, light appearance and handle.

You can find patterns written specifically for BRITISH BREEDS yarn in Marie Wallin's book Wildwood and now her newest book Gentle

Composition: 100% British Wool
Yarn Weight: Fingering
Yardage: 93y/85m per 25g
Gauge: 26-28 st in 4"/10cm on 3.0-3.25mm
Care: Hand wash in cool water. Lay flat to dry