Marie Wallin's British Breeds

BRITISH BREEDS is Marie Wallin’s signature yarn - a beautiful, soft, bouncy 4 ply yarn. Worsted spun in Devon, BRITISH BREEDS is now available in sixteen shades. A carefully curated color palette that Marie insured will work well together in Fair Isle knitting, but also would be beautiful for single color projects.

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 of the twelve base colours. 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.

25 grams / 93 yards
6.5 stitches per inch / US 3
Handwash in cool water and mild soap