What the flip is BFL?
“BFL” is our way of avoiding writing out “Bluefaced Leicester” on yarn tags dozens of times every week. Bluefaced Leicester (that’s pronounced like “lester”) is a breed of sheep from Great Britain. They are classified as a “longwool” sheep, which means pretty much what is sounds like it means… The staple length is between 3″ and 6″, so it spins up into a very smooth, dense, sturdy yarn. BFL fibers generally have a micron count (that measures the thickness of the individual hair) of 24-28µ, making the fiber just a little less soft than our Merino X. One of our favorite qualities of BFL yarn is its amazing luster! Generally speaking, finer wools have low luster and coarser wools have high luster. In the case of Bluefaced Leicester, though, you can have softness plus shine plus an amazing drape. BFL’s are happy living around the Pacific Northwest, so we try to get our hands on as many local fleeces as we can.
