South American Top

About the fibre

Staple length 75-80. Micron count 25-26

Fine

Each bag contains 100g of wool.

This glossy wool feels somewhere in between a Merino and a Corriedale in terms of softness. Its texture makes it easy to spin, and it can also be used to add texture to felted pieces.

About the breed

This is a blend of white wools from flocks raised in South America. It is a very high quality wool. Dual-purpose, wool-bearing sheep are raised in two broadly-defined regions of the continent: in the highland of the Andes mountains, and in the southern "cone," as the continent tapers southerly to a point moving away from the Equator.

The latter region contains two of the highest wool producing countries, Argentina and Uruguay. Merino sheep do especially well in Uruguay. Wools from this region are of the fine-to-medium range. In the Andean highlands of Peru, slightly coarser wool is the norm, but the sheep are mostly raised by smallhold farmers, rather than larger commercial concerns.

Jeff P from Berkeley, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons