Bond. "Kyne" Bond.

In July, when I drove up to Charlevoix for the Fiber Arts Festival, I had a very important purchase in mind: a Bond fleece.

According to both The Fleece and Fiber Source Book (D Robson and C Ekarius) and In Sheep’s Clothing (N Fournier and J Fournier), the Bond breed arose around the turn of the 20th century in Australia from a cross between Lincoln and Merino sheep: a very nice combo, resulting in a soft and springy wool with a long staple length.

The back story: Last year at the Charlevoix show I visited the booth of Big Hand Farm.


They had a few dozen of the loveliest, cleanest fleeces. I spied and admired a few brown fleeces, I wrote a note to myself with the names of the sheep from which these fleeces had come, and I wandered away from the booth. About a half hour later, I decided to go back to the booth and buy one of those fleeces. But they were all already sold!

So, over the intervening year, I plotted and planned to get to that booth right away this year and buy one of those fleeces. As soon as I arrived at the festival, I made a beeline for their booth, and quickly picked a lovely fleece from a sheep named “Kyne”. I was smitten. The fleece was darn big: 8.6 pounds. The locks were a good length, about 5 inches, and had a nice tight french-fry-crinkle-cut shape to the crimp.

I did not drive home with this fleece. Instead, I took it over to Deb McDermott’s booth, Stonehedge Fiber Mill, and dropped it off with her. Last week I got the fleece-turned-roving. “Kyne” is kinda nice, don’t you think?


I spun up a bit of the roving. Yum! It’s too bad that the picture can’t tell you how soft and elastic this wool and its yarn are.


Then, I took a pinch and combed it. One pass on my Valkerie double pitch combs. Even more yum!

I’ve got 5 pounds and 12 ounces of this lovely roving. Kyne is sure to keep me happy for a good long time.