It is a clear crisp day in the Glen of Imaal in Co Wicklow with views of the Lugnaquilla and Keadeen mountains in the distance, the sun glancing over their frosty crests and foothills. Grazing peacefully in the field around us are farmer Lionel Mackey’s Blue Leicester sheep, part of his pedigree flocks that include Romneys, prized for their fleeces.
It was a mix of the two that produced the yarn spun by Donegal Yarns used in a heritage baby blanket that won Ériu – the company set up by Mackey with his wife, Zoë Daly, in 2018 – last year’s Showcase award for Overall Best Product. Ériu continues to champion Irish wool and make its wool available to the knitting industry.
“We want to supply wool with full traceability to the farmers of our products, and we source from all over the country with five farms that have formed a co-op called The Emerald Romneys,” says Daly. Mackey adds that their aim will be to grow a Fair Trade network for Irish sheep farmers to help create value for Irish wool, lost in recent years. Those supplying Eriu are mostly small farmers with pedigree flocks all over the country.
It’s a pioneering venture and already Eriu is selling skeins in 10 colours for knitters, wool blankets, woven shawls, capes and unisex sweaters. There is growing significant interest from abroad, particularly Japan. “It’s an opportunity for Ireland to get back on its feet with wool,” says Daly. They are also working with knitters in Lucan, experimenting with sweaters and cardigans made with their yarns.
How all this started is a story in itself. When Daly’s first child was born, her Sligo-based grandmother, Kirsty, knitted her a baby blanket. Daly was later to discover that, despite there being millions of sheep in Ireland, no baby gear in Irish wool could be found anywhere, so the idea grew of doing something about it.
That led to five years of research as she became determined to make a difference. It was then that she met Lionel Mackey, whose father, Ernest, had moved from Meath to Wicklow in 1979 to farm sheep and beef as well as setting up an equestrian supply business.
“It was destiny,” she says. Seeing the continual deterioration of wool prices, the idea of initiating and growing a Fair Trade network for Irish sheep farmers convinced Lionel to set up Ériu with Daly. Since then, their ambitious plans include restoring a woollen mill bought from Meath that had originally been destined for Iceland. When operational, it will spin and card any wool or alpaca fibre. That will make their company fully circular and sustainable.
At Showcase recently Ériu presented new blends of worsted yarn in new colour palettes, new blankets, wool skeins and cones, along with a handbook of 10 knitting patterns. Their venture is supported by Enterprise Ireland and Circuleire, Ireland’s first multimillion euro circular innovation network.
Another ambitious wool project is being developed by Stable, where owners Frances Duff and Sonia Reynolds have always brought a contemporary aesthetic to heritage fabrics linen and wool. Both have a close and long-standing connection to Wicklow, where Duff lives, and Duff recently crossed paths with a local sheep farmer Catherine McCann, who has a small flock of Romneys – the classic medium large white sheep familiar from children’s books – which she has been shearing herself.
Frances explains that McCann had been searching for a way of using the wool rather than treating it as a waste product. “She decided to get her wool scoured [cleaned] and spun, and it was a beautiful natural colour, warm white, creamy with a lovely handle. We asked Studio Donegal to weave it and hence the Wicklow Wool Project was born.”
Both Duff and Reynolds have a passionate interest in taking the fleece from field through to a finished product “and we are very interested in weaving (rather than knitting) with it as it has such a beautiful colour and structure, so we see it as cloth which can be used in interiors – for curtains, cushions, bed blankets or upholstery – and not for wearing against the skin, which requires another level of softness”.
Stable now intends to develop the cloth, which it will launch in April, and work with interior designers with the quantities McCann can produce. “We are taking the virtue of the wool in its natural state and not trying to make it something it isn’t. We are always looking at things in a different way and what we can do to turn something of quality into something unique and Irish.”
