Breed Study: Zwartbles

Zwartbles originated in the Netherlands, they were developed by crossing two of the main types of native sheep: a hornless and short-tailed Friesian milk sheep and a horned Drenthe with hairy fleece.

Traditionally Zwartbles were bred for milk and meat, but due to the decline in demand there were only a couple of hundred of these sheep remaining in the 1970s. Luckily there was a resurgence in fibre arts and hand spinning during that time, farmers began to breed Zwartbles in large quantities to meet the demand for their wool. In the mid 1980s Zwartbles were introduced to the UK and they became very popular.

Zwartbles tops and a mini skein of test spin

Zwartbles wool is of medium to fine quality, around 27-32 micron, the crimp is excellent and the natural black colour is to simply gorgeous. The staple length is also medium, about 10-12.5cm.

I spun a small sample from the tops using a Turkish Spindle in the size S (Munchkin) and I let the fibre dictate how it wished to be spun. It feels buttery and springy in the hands, the spun yarn after finishing has a good bounce.

Manx Loaghtan sample swatches

As with all the tests I spun 5g of the fibre, again I didn’t measure the length of the spun yarn but you can see in the photo above, I wasn’t able to complete by swatches, I run out of yarn in the last round of the crochet swatch.

I used the same needle and hook size (3mm in both) for all the swatches, while the other swatches worked fairly easily they felt rather tight with the Zwartbles yarn, even though the yarn itself didn’t look or feel much thicker.

The Zwartbles yarn would be brilliant in colourwork knitting, which I do have a project in mind for, but that’s for later.