Description
This is black and with no light coloured or reflective fibres in it. Our other dark yarns in this thickness are Hebridean which is a very dark chocolate shade with shiny, kempy fibres, charcoal Jacob, which is essentially a very dark grey with flecks of white and the very dark brown Shetland made of moorit and black shetland wool blended together. This Natural Black Shetland seems to have the quality of taking light into itself rather than reflecting it. It has a quiet matt effect.
Use it alone if you want a simple dark garment, and perhaps one which does not draw attention to itself, allowing your other clothes to make their own statement. Or use it as a colour to emphasise the pattern when you are working with any of the other Shetland colours.
Shetland 4 ply is our yarn that is best suited for light lacy fabrics. Traditional Shetland lace shawls were made of a single ply called fingering and were so fine that they could be passed through a wedding ring! 4 ply is our finest wool but is not quite as thin, so your shawl may not thread through your ring. Nonetheless, this yarn gives some of the same feeling of delicacy in the fabric and is very warm for its weight. It is more difficult to see the details of the lace you are creating in dark colours but the effect is very interesting.
We have also found its softness very comfortable for socks, but as it is pure wool you will find it worth remembering (or if you are under about 50 years old, learning) how to darn. One solution is to reinforce the heels with our harder wearing Hebridean wool. These are creative activities for which you can make use of the range of colours!
We also have this colour-batch of wool spun as DK yarn.