Meet Lolly

Lolly will always hold a special place in our hearts here at Small Flock Yarns as she was the only black sheep that was in our starter flock of 7 sheep that we first got from our friends Sue and Graham at Wallis Farm in Pyecombe for our Small Holding in Poynings.

She is a blue beltex breed and she was a triplet. She was called Lolly because her legs were bent when she was born and she needed lolly sticks on them to stretch out the ligaments to enable her to walk.

She was bottle fed from a lamb so is super friendly and loves strokes!

She is also our resident escape artist on the land as she is small enough to get underneath fences and run through other bits of the field so we have to regularly check that our fences are secure to help avoid her doing this.

Since she was the only beltex blue in our flock, her fleece wasn't able to be spun with the rest of our flock at our local mill so we arranged to have her fleece hand spun by Sarah at the Wool Gathering Collective.

I received 8 x 100g skeins back from Lolly's fleece and I decided to knit myself a sweater with her wool:

I kept the stitch pattern simple and knitted the main body of the sweater in Moss-Stitch. I also knitted it completely in the round on 6mm needles.

The yarn was aran weight and very rustic in the spinning style due to it being hand spun:

The wool had lovely flecks of dark and light brown shades and was very soft and I can wear the sweater directly on my skin.

I had one x 100g skein left over that I'll be knitting some fingerless gloves for my husband.

We are currently processing Lolly's second fleece that was sheared this year into hand knitting wool with the hand spun method again and this will be available on the website next year.

Also this year, Lolly has become a mum!

She gave birth to a gorgeous little lamb called Joanie who is a Beltex Blue x Kent Romney cross and has a lovely face and markings.

Joanie is a little shy and loves to stick by Lolly's side and follow her round the field which is very sweet to watch.

Joanie has also picked up Lolly's love for food too. Lolly is always first in queue when we have sheep biscuits to give them, followed by Joanie.

Are you team Lolly? then perhaps you'd like one of these enamel pin badges that are available in the haberdashery section of the shop: