About Us
Shetland wool, handmade products and croft life
About The Silly Sheep
We are a small traditional croft on the Westside of Shetland Mainland.
“We” are myself
Becky Crofter, shepherdess, wool processor & dyer, shop keeper, talk giver, baker, the list goes on & thinker up of the next bit to add to the slightly crazy but fullfilling life that we have!
My Husband Ian
Long suffering, incredibly supportive, fulltime working, part-time crofter & wise head for some of my more crazy ideas !!
Our 2 grown up sons
One who lives at home & helps out daily & works part-time in the village school & one who lives near Lerwick & comes help on his days off.
My Dad
He moved to Shetland a couple of yrs ago to be closer, he helps out with the croft, moves sheep for me in his trailer, is the technical voice in quite a few of my crazier plans & is the person who has constructed almost everything on this croft that isnt held together with cable ties & string! When he isn’t helping us, he looks after poorly bats, watches for & records whales & dolphins & has a generally hectic retirement !
We have a 25 acre croft which by Shetland standards is small. Our ground is a mix of shallow soil & clay on bedrock & peaty bogs with some relatively reasonable bits in-between! We are lucky enough to have some amazing archaeology, with approx. 4000 yrs of occupation, some which is very visible & some that I hope one day we will excavate.
When we moved to Shetland in 2019, we brought a mixed flock of sheep with us, a few Shetlands, Hebrideans, Hebridean cross & the last 3 Scottish Blackface that we started our flock with. Over the years, for a few reasons these have all gone except 1 Hebridean, our wool flock is now 100% Shetland. We have a handful of other sheep of other breeds, 1 Suffolk, 1 Vailais Blacknose x Shetland & 2 Shetland x Cheviots. We were already producing our own knitting wools & that has been tweaked & developed over the past few years. We still have some of our mixed flock wool & are currently developing some ready made products with it.
Home To Happy Sheep & Their Beautiful Fleeces
The Silly Sheep fibre company is a small family croft business on the West Mainland of Shetland, in the village of Walls.
We started producing our own knitting wools while we were living in the Outer Hebrides, to justify keeping our starter flock of orphan lambs.
Our first six sheep, all Scottish Blackface orphan lambs arrived in 2013, by 2017 we had also bought 9 Hebridean ewe lambs.
We had already experimented with having our shearling Blackface fleeces spun by the newly established Uist Wool, so the step to signing up with a commercial mill wasn’t too intimidating.
Seeing a demand for what we had produced, but being very limited on croft space, lead to me buying white Cheviot fleeces & Zwartbles from a friend. The step to dyeing them seemed an obvious one.
We now in 2025 currently have a flock of 90, that has evolved from the mixed flock of 24 that moved to Shetland with us in 2019 into a flock of pure Shetland bred, Shetland sheep in a rainbow of natural colours, mostly now born & raised on our croft. These produce our knitting wools along with fleeces from a friends flock.
I still have a huge soft spot for other breeds & if you visit us you may meet a Suffolk, a Shetland x Valais Blacknose, a couple of Shetland x Cheviot & 1 Hebridean who is left from our original flock of Hebrideans !
Our wool is graded & colour batched by me before it is sent to the mill, the mill simple washes & spins exactly to my order & then sends it straight back for me to start dyeing. All of the wools & fibre that you will see are dyed by me here on the croft.
Home To Happy Sheep & Their Beautiful Fleeces
The Silly Sheep fibre company is a small family croft business on the West Mainland of Shetland, in the village of Walls.
We started producing our own knitting wools while we were living in the Outer Hebrides, to justify keeping our starter flock of orphan lambs.
Our first six sheep, all Scottish Blackface orphan lambs arrived in 2013, by 2017 we had also bought 9 Hebridean ewe lambs.
We had already experimented with having our shearling Blackface fleeces spun by the newly established Uist Wool, so the step to signing up with a commercial mill wasn’t too intimidating.
Seeing a demand for what we had produced, but being very limited on croft space, lead to me buying white Cheviot fleeces & Zwartbles from a friend. The step to dyeing them seemed an obvious one.
We now in 2025 currently have a flock of 90, that has evolved from the mixed flock of 24 that moved to Shetland with us in 2019 into a flock of pure Shetland bred, Shetland sheep in a rainbow of natural colours, mostly now born & raised on our croft. These produce our knitting wools along with fleeces from a friends flock.
I still have a huge soft spot for other breeds & if you visit us you may meet a Suffolk, a Shetland x Valais Blacknose, a couple of Shetland x Cheviot & 1 Hebridean who is left from our original flock of Hebrideans!
Our wool is graded & colour batched by me before it is sent to the mill, the mill simple washes & spins exactly to my order & then sends it straight back for me to start dyeing. All of the wools & fibre that you will see are dyed by me here on the croft.