Shade card sheep

As a small yarn producer, I am often asked whether I sell shade cards, but I’ve never been quite sure how to present them. When my dear pal Felix got married recently, some fabulous wool-wrapped sheep featured among her many woolly wedding favours. Those wee sheep rather took hold of my imagination and I just couldn’t stop thinking about how well they’d work as shade cards.

I recently acquired some wee laser-cut sheep from a UK supplier and my mum and I spent a pleasant few hours yesterday afternoon wrapping strands of yarn around sheep. I am really quite pleased with the result!

All eleven shades of Buachaille are represented and to make the shade card, we cut the yarn into generous foot-long lengths, and secured them around each sheep with a simple slip knot. Unlike other shade cards, this means that you can then use and re-use your sheep as a template to test out different palettes, shade juxtapositions and colourways.

For example, here’s the original Moder Dy palette:

And here’s the Carraig Fhada palette:

Carraig Fhada features s a neutral palette with a single accent colour, and with the help of the sheep it is really easy to swap out the accent to test another shade choice. I am particularly fond of this alternative grellow palette . . .

We also had fun experimenting with blues

and fiery shades

and found that creating these sheepy palettes can become a bit addictive . . . I rapidly ended up with a whole flock.

Anyway, if you are one of those folk who like to have a shade card, I’ve now put a few sheepy shade cards on sale in the shop (try saying that at speed). If you like them, we’ll make up some more.

Baa.