Meg Rodger in Berneray founded the Birlinn Yarn Company to sell the yarn from her flock of pedigree Hebridean sheep, along with wool gathered from neighbouring island crofts. The ancestors of the breed were brought to the Western Isles by the Norse, and she has woven a vararfeldur (Norse cloak) from their fleece in honour of Auðr the Deep Minded, who sailed via Caithness and Orkney to claim settlement lands in Iceland, the sole woman to do so. Meg works towards a ‘whole sheep plan’, producing yarn, organic tanned sheepskins and Hebridean Hogget meat boxes.

Alison Gault of Belfast School of Art is an accomplished designer, who has worked with wool from Berneray and from islands like Rathlin, once discarded as too tough but now spun, knitted and woven through Ulster University’s Future Island-Island project. She has collaborated in the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland with the knitwear company Inis Meáin, founded almost fifty years ago to create skilled job opportunities for young people. She promotes the take-up of computer-aided design and manufacture in the knitting industry and is the Irish President of the International Federation of Knitting Technologists.

Organised by the North Ronaldsay Trust and supported by the OIC Nordic Atlantic Fund

Images credit: Alison Gault