Celebrating Scottish Wool, One Fleece at a Time
A journey from curiosity, to passion, to purpose.
A lifelong love of wool & a chance conversation...
I am Claudia and as a lifelong knitter I had this idea of having my own sheep. When we moved to the Scottish Borders the dream came a bit closer. Renting a house on a sheep farm and helping with lambing I soon came to love these characterful animals even more.
One day I spoke to the local shepherd and asked him for a spare fleece for a project in the garden. I asked him for the worst fleece, the one that was not good enough to bring to the wool market. The worthless one.
A few days later he turned up with a beautiful brown fleece from a Bluefaced Leicester. It was oh so soft and had a fantastic range of colour. The fibres were long with a nice crimp and seemed to be just made to be spun and knitted.
How come that that was the worst fleece I asked?
Well, it was brown. And therefore it can’t be dyed commercially.
That fleece wasn’t waste - it was possibility.
A turning point...
I immediately gave up my plan to felt the fleece and decided that instead I had to learn how to clean, card and spin the wool. It was too good in my eyes to be used in the garden.
Over the next year I joined the local Weaver, Spinners and Dyers Guild and during the summer attended the Border Union Agricultural Show in Kelso.
Speaking with other farmers it soon became clear: there are lots of nice fleeces around which farmers just see as a waste product.
The main problem was that the fleeces were worth less than the cost of shearing and fuel to get them to the local wool depot. These fleeces are not grown for wool, they are a by-product of the meat industry.
The idea that changed everything...
And there it was, this little idea growing in my head.
How about if we use this by-product, pay the farmers a bit more so they can cover their costs and use what is growing steadily around us instead of importing wool from abroad for knitting?
Wedale Wool is the result of this journey and I am so excited to bring this beautiful, sustainable, local product to the market.
Why waste what’s already here - grown naturally, sustainably and beautifully - in the Scottish Borders?
Knitting was where it began - the sheep found me later.
Go yarn shopping!
