I acquired these samples almost a year ago, if not over a year ago, from a friend of mine who was destashing. All the samples were unwashed pieces of fleece in little sandwich sized baggies.
Before I could begin to process these I had to was them. I took the sample out of the bag and opened the locks up while a bucket was getting filled with very hot water with a spoon full of Orvus soap. That is a live stock soap, recommended to me by another spinning friend. Once the lock was opened up a bit and some of the debris or vegetable matter (vm as the cool kids call it), I placed the wool in the water. With a smooth stick I gently push the wool under and swish it around a bit. The agitation you use should be very minimal otherwise the wool will felt and be terribly difficult, if not impossible to spin. The water needs to be hot in order for the grease, or lanolin, can be heated and melted off in the water. Make sure if you're doing a lot of this to not dump the water down the drain as the lanolin can clog your pipes. I did a large portion of it over the summer outside. The baths in water and soap may need to be more than once to get the wool all clean. Once the wool is clean, pat it in a towel and roll it up and squeeze. This helps to get a lot of the water out. Leave the wool spread out and air dry. Do not wring or make any friction when the wool is wet, it can still felt.
I did not wash all of them at once. It was over the course of a year that this all happened.
Then I went to my handy fleece study book and read about all the breeds I had samples of. I borrowed a set of viking combs and a set of English combs for the longwools, and I had carders for the downy breeds. I found the English combs cumbersome and the viking combs didn't do as nice a job as I hoped, so I settled on a pair of double rowed viking combs that I like very much. The combing process is long. I only did one sample as instructed by Peter Teal in Hand Woolcombing and Spinning, however this one sample is really quite nice.
The next tip I have, take time to clean the wool from any nups or vm or second cuts as this just makes the yarn bumpy and uneven. The more time you take in the prep the faster the spinning can go and the better the end result.
Going into this, I had an interest for the longwools. These are wools that tend to look a lot like hair. Often times the locks are used in antique and reproduction dolls. Due to the industrialization of the garment industry the longwools fell out of interest because the wool is not suitable for the carding or combing machines in the industry, so thus, many of the breeds are endangered. At the first long wool samples I was not too pleased with them, but recently I have enjoyed them very much. These are some of them: From L to R Coopworth, Teesewater, Karakul, Wenslydale, Lincoln, Border Leicester.
Then to down breeds I enjoyed carding. Highly crimped, they made wonderful bouncy yarns.
Each one came out beautifully. I couldn't have been happier getting to know the breeds better. I also learned a lot about spinning in the process. Now I just need to decide what to spin next...
Post a Comment