Why did we choose Little Sheepie for our yarn business? Being based in Scotland it could be because sheepie is an affectionate word for sheep. There are many Scots words for sheep including wedder (a castrated male sheep also known as wether) and lambie (an affectionate name for a lamb). However, this isn’t where the name comes from. When visiting my in-law’s croft in Lewis we needed to move the sheep from near the house into a nearby field. I was told that the sheep only understood Gaelic and we would need to call caoirich (KOO-rikh) to get them to move. As a non-Gaelic speaker I improvised by calling ‘here sheepies’ as I didn’t know the Gaelic at the time. I accompanied this with a bucket of sheep nuts which I enthusiastically shook. Whether it was the call of ‘here sheepie’ or the lure of the sheep nuts (probably the latter) we will never know! Since then any sheep we’ve met have been affectionately called sheepies, so when it came to choosing a yarn name it was a no-brainer.
