How Many Colors Can One Sheep Grow?

Before my dear friend Jennifer Denning proposed that she find me some Merino sheep, I was a naïve but passionate knitter. I would go to my local yarn store and look for something in the right weight that was soft and a good color. I literally thought my projects began with the yarn—I didn’t think about the sheep, or the farmers that raised them. I certainly didn’t know that Merino came in colors other than white, or that people like Jen could raise their own Merino fiber. I never really thought about the origins of any of the balls of yarn I bought. I just thought that all wool came from big companies who had thousands of sheep, and that wool was sent out somewhere to a factory where balls of yarn were manufactured on a scale like peanut butter or ice cream.

But in 2018, Jen found Laurel Stone of Apple Creek Merinos and bought four ewes, which Jen would keep for me at Blossom’s Farm, her place in Eugene, Oregon. Our plan was to blend the fine Merino with the fiber from other exotic animals I had just begun raising in the Pacific Northwest. The ewes now live with Jen on her farm, where it is arid and well suited to coated fleece. One of the ewes, Precious, produces fleece that is divinely soft and full of bold crimp. From that one beautiful ewe I get a range of exciting colors—dark gray-brown to light silver gray to white—all in one fleece. [PAYWALL]

Little Hawkeye is moorit, or warm milk-chocolate colored. Photo courtesy of Apple Creek Merinos

Bringing Back Color

Laurel Stone has a “spinner’s flock,” which means that she breeds and raises fewer than 100 sheep specifically with the handspinner and small mill in mind. She does have some beautiful award-winning white Merinos, but her colored Merinos are the most exciting to me. All of Precious’s beautiful shades of gray come from Laurel’s selective breeding, which does not allow the dominant white gene to be expressed. This is a relatively new approach to growing Merino fiber, because historically, it was the white fiber that was so desirable.

When commercial mills process huge batches of wool, they need the fiber to be completely homogenous. If colors were introduced into the white, the mill run would be contaminated, and no dark flecks or inconsistencies are allowed in the commercial yarns. So over hundreds of years, Merino producers bred out the colors, trying to eliminate the recessive colored genes. It took Laurel and other Merino breeders to bring color back into their flocks so that handspinners and small mill producers could enjoy the natural range of colors. When I look at Precious’s fleece and dream of the rich range of colors I’m going to get to see in the yarn, I think Laurel’s approach is magic.

Carol Steitzhof holds samples of yarns in a few of the colors from her naturally colored Merino flock. Photo by Lisa Mitchell

The Steitzhofs of Montana are of the same mind. Their Merinos have spots and colors and ranges that are exciting. Carol and John tell me with pride and enthusiasm, “We’ve only had two whites in the last 8 years.” Carol holds up small yarn samples that show me their range of colors, and then she points to a shawl she made that has stripes of gray, light brown, dark brown, and cream. All of these colors are deep and rich, and they didn’t come from a powder or a bottle or any chemical. The colors (often more than three per animal) were grown right on the beautiful sheep.

Both Laurel and the Steitzhofs get yarn made with the skirtings that come from shearing the sheep. This part of the fleece is not prime and won’t be sold to a handspinner. It comes from the neck and hind legs, where the wool is just as fine (if not more so) but might be shorter or slightly less consistent in crimp than the other parts of the fleece. They send these skirtings to their favorite mill and get yarn made out of them. Knitters, eager for this fine, naturally colored yarn, flock to their farm booths at festivals. It’s truly a privilege to knit with yarn that was made with such care.

Mom Lily and her twin lambs, with wool ranging from creamy white to near black. Photo courtesy of Apple Creek Merino

Jen does a great job raising our Merinos on her farm. Where I live, farther north in Western Washington, it’s just too wet for them. So she does the sheep raising, and I get to do the fleece processing. I’ve gone from naïve knitter to now a passionate wool processor, hand-dyer, and handspinner. I’ve learned all the steps to making yarn to knit a sweater. There’s even a name for that that I’ve learned: they call it Sheep to Shawl.

Layers of Natural Color

One of the most surprising things I’ve learned is how the natural color of wool lends a depth to dyes. When I immerse a gray skein of Merino into my botanical dye pot of something like marigold, it takes on a greenish-gold hue that is otherworldly. Cochineal, a cultivated dye insect, becomes rich purple/magenta. And madder, a root, turns the skein into an orange/red/burgundy extravaganza. These colors can’t be made any other way. And it all starts with the sheep’s beautiful job of growing the base color.

Precious's red-ribbon-winning fleece. Photo by Lisa Mitchell

I’m proud to say that Precious’s fleece took a red ribbon at the Black Sheep Gathering fiber festival in June. And Laurel and I got to walk Honey Crisp, one of her beautiful colored ewes, who sported her latte-colored fleece (called moorit), in the Spinner’s Lead show. I sent Precious’s ribbon to Jen so she could show Precious and celebrate. And now I have a winter of wool processing ahead of me. It’s perfect, because come November at shearing, we will get to see what Precious has grown, I’m sure we will be celebrating her natural colors with more oohs and aahs.

Links

Apple Creek Merinos
Apple Creek Merinos yarn
Steitzhof Merinos

Lisa Mitchell is a former art therapist. She and her husband raise guanacos for their exquisite fiber on Whidbey Island in the Pacific Northwest. Lisa’s retreats and podcast, A Fiber Life, focus on ways in which caring for wild animals and making things with fiber by hand teaches universal life lessons. Her farm page can be found at afiberlife.com.