My name is Karen Roberts and am the creater of Fflwff®

The origins of Fflwff can be tracked back to my Diagnosis with Parkinson's disease in February 2017 just after my 46th birthday.

It's stange, the things we have to be grateful for!

Having the benefit of foresight, We knew I wouldn't be working as Hospital Pharmacy Technician until retirement age.

We decided that the whole family would benefit by a move to somewhere with outdoor space where we could appriceate nature and also create a glampsite to future proof an income.

We eventually found our forever home and moved in August 2018.

On the property is a small paddock with an outcrop of rock.

From the moment I saw it, I could imagine lambs playing on it.

knowing nothing about sheep at that time, I turned to the internet and feel in love with the indearing cuteness of a Swiss breed, Valais Blacknose. They are considered to be the cutest breed in the world.

There were two things that prevented me from purchasing any:

1. My husband, Alan, did not share my new enthusiasm for having pet sheep and I received a firm

“not a chance!”

2. The cost, with the starting price of a "well marked" ewe lamb being £3500.

Despite the these significant obstacles, I still dreamed, googled, researched and talked about the idea extensively.

I got my lucky break when Alan developed a want of his own, A very expensive camera lens! He knew that he couldn't justify the cost of the lens with me and so an agreement was struck!

This still left the issue of the cost! Although the cost could be considered an investment should they have future lambs, I still couldn't afford the outlay.

Again I hit lucky! I was able to buy two extremely well bred lambs at a price I could afford because they were severely miss-marked! one more so than the other. Despite having different mothers, they were both fathered by Westmoreland Frankie. a reserve champion winner at the Blacknose Beauties show.

Their “faults” just made them more endearing but with their excellent DNA, there is still every chance they would produce beautifully marked lambs.

Whilst we waited for the day that we could bring our girls home, we stock proofed our small paddock, built a small field shelter in the paddock, bought and tidied up an old sheep trailer and cleared an area of our out building to create a small pen with built in hay rack. The day finally arrived when myself and my daughter hooked up the sheep trailer for the long drive to collect our little lambs.

They were not little though! in fact they were huge! very cute but huge!

When we got home we realised that we would have struggled to get one of them in their lovingly prepared small pen. So they spent the first few nights in the sheep trailer whilst we organised a larger pen in the outbuilding.

The video below shows Seren and Gwenllian playing with my daughter just a couple weeks after they arrived (as you can see, they were not little lambs).

You may be thinking that Alan would be feeling resentful about all the work involved but as soon as he saw them he was smitten! Turning them out into the paddock, getting them in at night, giving hard feed, hay and water are usually done before I get a chance and they know exactly who to baa to when they want a top up!

When the girls were sheared for the 1st time, I was left with two large bin bags of fleece. I knew their fleeces had little monetary value in their raw state.

But although I did not know about all the incredible properties of wool then, I instictively felt they were precious!

That may have been because my girls had grown them. But either way, I felt a responsibility to do justice by this wonderful natural resource. Having no prior knowledge of wool processing, I turned to google again and discovered an endless world of learning and creativity.

Having learned to skirt, wash(scour) and card the fleece I learned to felt and I found my thing.

Fflwff was born!

An exploration into the qualities of wool of all types from the finest Merino to the coarsest Mountain breeds, matching the properties of a breed with the purpose of a piece.

experimenting with methods of cleaning, dyeing, carding, combing and of course felting. Playing with other natural materials to felt into the wool: fibres, wool locks, fabrics, lace, yarns, etc and even paper.

I love to demonstrate how beautiful pieces can be created by the wrongly undervalued wools, such as our own native Welsh breeds, and encourage others to do so to.

I enjoy sharing what I have learnt and hope to inspire others of all ability and disability to create with and include wool in their lives and homes!