Finnish Wool Top

About the fibre

Staple length 80mm. Micron count 28-30

Medium

Finnsheep wool is similar to Blue Faced Leicester wool, and is a good felting wool. It is a soft and lustrous wool and relatively fine for a heritage breed.

Each bag contains 100g of wool.

About the breed

Finnsheep are native to Finland, and belong to the Northern European short-tailed sheep group. They are closely related to the Shetland and Icelandic breeds. Like those breeds, Finnsheep come in a variety of colours, as well as pied (spotted) colourings. Not surprisingly for such an ancient heritage breed, they are a multipurpose sheep, raised for their meat and milk as well as their wool. They also make excellent "land management" sheep, improving lands that have been taken over by weeds or invasive plants; since they have been raised for centuries on the meagre offerings of Finland's wind-blown landscapes, they are not to be daunted by tough plant life. Finnsheep are now found all over the world. They have such good wool-bearing characteristics that in Australia some have even been added to Merino flocks to improve the latter breed!

David Smith from Elimäki, Finland, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons