7 Grey Cairns
of Camster5 Gorse
9 Forsinard Flows
8 Scrabster
2 Cromarty
4 Dunrobin
6 Heilan’
Coo3 Wee D ra m
1 Black Isle
in the end, we were drawn to Shetland
wool, because of the wonderful range of
natural colours that it comes in – from a
beautiful soft, creamy white through a
range of natural fawns, browns and greys
to what is called ‘black’, but is usually more
of a dark brown shot through with grey.
“This is particularly important for us,
as although we love working with dyed
colours, we usually blend a lot of natural
coloured fleece back in with the dyed
colours to get the subtle landscape-
inspired shades we’re looking for. Shetland
wool also has a lovely sheen, which makes
the colours seem to glow from within.”
The results of all this careful dyeing and
blending can be seen in the photos of
various shades in the range, illustrating
our map of the North Coast 500 route.
“These photos which illustrate the map
were taken by Peter and Irene Kwinten, a
Dutch couple who were taking their own
trip around the route. Irene had a plan to
take a ball of each yarn shade on their trip
and knit a scarf as they went, putting the
colours in the order of their position on the
map. They wrote a great blog as they went
(http://bit.ly/peterenirene), and took some
superb photos of our yarn ‘on location’.”Glowing colours
To produce North Coast Tweed, John and
Juliet buy UK-sourced Shetland fleece from
a mill in Yorkshire, which is then blended
according to their ‘secret recipes’ to make
their special tweedy colour combinations,
before drafting and spinning. “We use
a fully worsted process for this yarn,
meaning that the fleece is combed after
carding to align all the fibres,” Juliet says.
“This emphasises the lustre of the yarn,
and makes North Coast Tweed a bit
different from other (also very lovely)
Shetland knitting yarns available.”
John and Juliet naturally love all the
shades in the range, and our illustrated
map shows the inspiration for many of the
36 colours. When pushed, though, Juliet
admits to having a soft spot to a blue
called Loch Maree: “Pretty much the first
‘finished’ yarn we made when we were
developing the process was Loch Maree –
a beautiful blend of blues, green, and teals
inspired by the crystal clear waters of the
loch reflecting its surrounding mountains
with just a hint of blue sky. And we
sometimes think that we should have
stopped there and not bothered with the
other 35 colours in the range, because
we’ve sold almost as much Loch Maree as
all the other colours put together!”- Visit http://www.thebordermill.co.uk to buy
North Coast Tweed - Discover the North Coast 500 route at
MA http://www.northcoast500.com
P^ ©CROWN^ COP
YR
IGHT^2019ORDNAN
CE^SU
RV
EY.MEDIA062 /^19.^
PH
OT
OGRA
PH
S^ BY^ PETER^ KWI
NT(^1) EN
2
3
8
7
9
6
4
5
Ya rn stori es