It’s time!

Time to start spinning and knitting more sheep breeds to turn my Fuzzy Mammals of the World from a vest to a jacket to now, a coat. Again, this will be a very long-term project. I plan to use another 50-60 breeds if I can, to turn this into a long coat. I plan to make this skirt portion detachable, since I’m sure a long coat will be far less practical and useable than the jacket, which I wear all the time.

The Breeds:

1. Fox-Coburg - My friend, judyhume, went to Germany several years ago and brought back this lovely rosy fleece from the red-headed sheep. So I have knitted a fox.

2. Gulf Coast Native - Thank you amymatilda . I used a manatee to represent this Floridian breed. It took me a few tries to get something even remotely recogniseabe. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but it will do for now. (ETA: I have just discovered that this looks rather phallic, and I think I will be reworking it!) We now have alligator tracks to represent this breed. Much less phallic!

3. Hampshire Down - Thank you Peacock. The breeder/sheep-rancher from Uruguay who gave this to me, said it was from her neighbor. She said she would never raise Hampshire Downs because they were known as inveterate fence-jumpers. So here is a fence for Hampshire Down to leap over (not showing up too well in this picture, but it is clearer in real life).

4. Oxford (or Oxford Down) - All descriptions of this breed mention that it requires good and abundant feed to thrive, so it gets a fork and spoon!

5. Letelle or South African Fine - for this, I went to the South African coat of arms. Along each edge is a pair of elephant tusks, and at the top is supposed to be a protea flower the national flower. However, it looks more like the rising sun from the coat of arms, so that’s OK, too.

6. German Blackheaded Mutton (or Deutsches Schwarzköpfiges Fleischschaf)- Thank you judyhume This breed has a story! My friend, Judy, travelled to Germany. While there, she heard rumours of someone who sold fleece. She ventured out deep into the middle of nowhere and knocked on a stranger’s door. With her limited German, she asked about the fleece, and thereby learned the difference between the word for sheepskins (which the farmer sold) and the word for fibre (which she used as mulch on her garden)! The farmer picked some fleece off the garden and gave it to her. The farm was in a place called Odenwald. So here is a one-eyed sheep (with an eyepatch!) in Odin’s Wood.

7. Drents Heideschaape (heathsheep): (Thank you, Pimmie). This little Dutch heathsheep comes in a wide range of colours, and I know I gave up a rare chance to do colour-work for this breed. However as I was reading an article about this sheep, a translated phrase jumped out at me; “this little sheep is a colourful genetic mess.” So I carded all the colours together somewhat randomly and knit a strand of DNA to make a colourful genetic mess..

8. Debouillet: Thank you, nyxnotnicks. This was derived from Rambouillet and was developed in New Mexico. So I knit the Zia sun symbol from the Pueblo people and the New Mexico flag.

9. Beulah Speckled Face: (Thank you, noncewords ) This is a Welsh breed, so this is Beulah, the speckled-faced Welsh dragon. This is part of the Tahesha dragon pattern. Even though I spun this yarn lace-weight, I did not have enough room to knit the whole dragon, so I will knit her from the mid-section up.

10. Babydoll: This variant of Southdown is very small. They are often used as weeders in vineyards, as they are too short to reach the grapes. So I divided my sample into two shades of grey and knit a cluster of grapes, and a grape vine with leaf. This fibre was very short and extremely crimpy. It spun into a very springy, elastic yarn that knit into an almost chenille-like fabric.

11. Florida Cracker: Thank you amymatilda for both the white and red! The original Florida cracker was the cowboy named after the cracking of his whip. So here is a cracker on his (rather worn-down-looking) horse.

12. Lleyn: (thank you Finsky) This fine fibre was a joy to spin - soft but sturdy. Here is another Welsh dragon for another Welsh breed.

13. Churro: I found a breeder at the New Hampshire S&W festival with several colours of fleece. I used a traditional Dine’ weaving motif as inspiration for this square.

14. Soay: (thank you mknits). This ancient, isolated breed from a small Scottish archipelago has been around likely since the Bronze Age. The St. Kilda Soay population is the subject of the longest-running population ecology study in the world - since 1985 in its current form, and since 1952 in other forms), studying the unique population dynamics and many other ecological relationships. This square is a copy of a graph showing the total sheep population on the island between 1997 and 2006.

15. Blue Texel: (thank you Pimmie). Texel is a Dutch meat breed with a specific single-gene mutation that allows it to gain more muscle than other sheep. Here, then is a stitch which resembles striated skeletal muscle fibres. Blue Texel was recently declared a separate breed from Texel.

16. Hog Island: (Thank-you, smorancie and mknits) This breed is descended from sheep initially brought to this barrier island off the coast of Virginia in the 1700’s. In the 1930’s, the human population left the island due to a string of hurricanes. The sheep remained and went feral. So I knit a hurricane. And because I had two colours, I knit a gradient hurricane.

17. Cheviot: (Thank you, @gabihugs and judyhume) Cheviot is known as a good sock fibre since it is naturally shrink-resistant.

18. Grå Trøndersau: (traded with Corellia). This breed originated in Trøndelag, which is where selbuvotter knitting was invented in 1857 by a shepherd named Marit Emstad, when she and her sister arrived at church one Sunday wearing gorgeous mittens with a new style of colourwork. So I spun the lightest and darkest fibre and knit a traditional selbuvotter rams’ horn rose motif.

19. Waldschaf (Wood or Forest Sheep): (Thank you mknits). “The wood sheep is descended from the Indo-European Zaupelschaf, with crossbreeds of other landraces. The word Zaupel, in Old Bavarian, meant loose girls or liederlich. The term is thus associated with high fertility and seasonality.” So I knit Venus de Willendorf, a famous fertility statue made some 30 000 years ago.