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Cwmchwefru Wool

@ Lesley Wickham

Specially bred flock

The most important day of the year for a wool producer.

Our flock of sheep have been specially bred over many generations to provide high quality wool in a wide variety of natural colours. They are a complete mix of breeds, mostly British native wool breeds such as Wensleydale, Shetland, and Cotswold, but also imported breeds such as Gotland, Icelandic and primarily Corriedale to produce the fine quality we are looking for. At the same time, they have to be able to live in our climate in the Cambrian Mountains, so it is a constant challenge to keep all these qualities in the flock. It all started when I learnt to hand-spin long ago and couldn't find the type of fleece I wanted to spin, but got a bit out of hand!

Now there is little time for spinning as I look after the sheep and design and knit jumpers from the wool. The spinning is done by a small mill in Yorkshire (sadly not possible in Wales) and the throws and scarves are woven locally for me. The great revival of interest in hand knitting means that much of my wool is sold in skeins for other people to knit.

A new project this year is to have some local Welsh Mountain wool processed along with some Zwartbles (which is black) to produce an interesting mix of colours suitable for making into floor rugs. This will be in small skeins and on kilo cones for people who like to weave, knit or crochet household items, and we hope the first samples will be available at the Sheep Festival.