Long wool fleece

The locks all combed and ready to spin, just as soft as they look in the photo. A winter nest anyone?

As promised, here's a post about how I'm preparing the fleece I bought at the Royal Winter Fair. This is the fleece as it arrived home in a big shopping bag:

I even got to keep the 1st place ribbon this fleece won!
Fleece from: Ann Moffat in Schomberg

I've done a lot of reading lately on how to do this. I've ordered lots and lots of library books on the topic and read them pretty much cover to cover.

The locks in this fleece range in colour from pale silvery grey to very dark brown/black (pictured in the 2nd lock photo)

Once the locks are washed they needed to be picked apart before putting them on a drum carder. Then the drum carder combs the fleece into a batt which can be divided into roving so that it's ready to spin. You can also use drum carders to blend a variety of fleeces together. I'd like to try one sometime, but for now they're out of the budget at hundreds of dollars. In the future I may rent one.

Another way is to buy two hand carders (or mini-carders) and comb a small amount of locks at a time. Then you can roll up the fleece vertically into rolags for woolen spinning (lofty and fuzzy) or roll it up horizontally to make roving for worsted spinning (smoother, with aligned fibres). You can also use special sharp combs to comb out long locks.

The last way, which is the least expensive, is to just use a flick brush to comb out each lock. A dog brush works just as well, and that's what I have. As usual I'm trying to do things the simplest way I can without too many fancy tools, so that's one of the reasons I chose a fleece with well-defined locks so I could prepare it this way.

The locks vary in length, I've started working on the long (medium gray) ones

After flicking, I place the locks in a basket always aligned the same way, so I can spin consistently from tip to top. I like to store the combed locks as they are, then draft each one just before spinning it. Spinning such long locks took some getting used to, but I have the knack of it now.

The light and medium gray locks have a silvery sheen to them

My big disappointment has been discovering that while the combed locks are incredibly soft and fluffy, the resulting yarn has been a bit like twine. It still feels silky on the outside, but I can see now why long fleece is praised for being strong rather than soft.

Luckily I didn't expect next-to-skin softness. I want to make a warm hiking sweater that I've envisioned with deer/woodland motif intarsia. I figured I can make the intarsia motifs using the variety of natural colours in the fleece.
Usually I'm not one for swatching, being the impatient type, but in this case it's necessary as I have so much fleece to work with I want to make the best of it. I've spun a single, then navajo plied it, then knitted up a swatch. It's actually not bad. The skeined yarn looked kind of stiff and wiry but once knitted up it's smoother and softer than I expected.

I'm going to vary how I spin it and see which method gives me the best results. I can try fat singles, or spinning from the fold or a different number of plies. There's also the leftover soft fluff after flicking the locks and maybe that can be carded to create softer yarn. I'll let you know which method I choose in the end!

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Washing a fleece

The fleece before washing

Ok, so as promised here is the mucky job of washing a fleece (thank you for your comment Melissa!). I have lots to say about this as I've definitely done it the wrong way, and now I think I may have hit upon the right way. For me.

My first fleece was loaned to me by the lovely Marnie. We were chatting at our local farmer's market and I was talking about spinning. It turned out Marnie had a fleece given to her, and hadn't gotten around to working with it yet. So she loaned it to me to try out washing a fleece.

To wash a fleece, you use very hot water, a grease reducing detergent (not soap) such as Dawn (added after the water is poured to reduce bubbles), and be careful not to agitate the fleece or it will felt. Just let the fleece sit in the water and soak. Take it out when the water becomes warm because you don't want it to sit there until the water is cold or it will get shocked when you put it into its next hot water bath.

The goal is to clean out any dirt, bits of twigs and grass, and the lanolin. Sometimes spinners don't clean out the lanolin, and spin directly. This is called spinning "in the grease" and apparently can be very nice on your hands and the finished garment then has a natural water barrier. Very helpful if you're a fisherman off the Isle of Aran, or like to go hiking in a British climate or things like that.

The fleece soaking in the tub

Full of energy, I recklessly decided to wash the entire fleece at once. This is fine, there's really nothing wrong with that, but it is a lot of work. The main issue is that generally a fleece is a very dirty thing. So most websites were recommending washing small amounts at a time so that there's a big proportion of water to fleece.

Filthy water!

What happened is that I put it in my bathtub and every time I soaked it the water was filthy. I think I had to give it at least six baths.

Holding the fleece to one side to drain the tub

And each time I was hanging over the tub sort of holding the fleece out of the way while the tub drained and pulling wool out of the drain guard again and again then swishing the tub clean and then refilling the tub and I ended up hurting my back. I could barely walk the next day.

One of the lovely clean locks

Anyway, once the fleece seemed to be reasonably clean, I laid it out to dry and that took days. Lots of days. Mainly because I didn't have room to really spread it out, so it was in a big heap on a towel on the floor. Until finally we had a reasonable sunny day and I put it outside to dry. This fleece is now in a big bag but the staple length (length of the locks) is quite short so I think I will need some carders before I can get it ready to spin.

So the right way, as you have probably guessed by now, is to wash your fleece a little bit at a time. I sorted my fleece by colour, light grey, medium grey, dark grey and brown/black. Then stored each in a separate bag. So now I'm working my way through the first bag. I've done one small batch (in the sink, standing up!) and it just took 3 soaks. Then I drained it and put it on a towel on a drying rack to dry. Washing should keep the locks intact. I separated the locks out on the towel and the next morning they felt pretty dry. It's best that they're not bone dry anyway so that if you prepare them with a flick brush there's less static.

I'll show you how I'm preparing my locks in another post...

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Royal Winter Fair

Angora rabbits being judged. They're just giant balls of fluff.

Yesterday we went to the Royal Winter Fair. I've been keen to go and attend the wool auction. They also had a drop spindle competition, and several spinning and weaving groups demonstrating spinning on a spinning wheel and weaving on a loom.

The main event was a sheep to shawl competition where the participants spin the yarn straight from the fleece, then weave a shawl which ends up being judged then finally sold at the wool auction. They also auctioned the skeins that were spun on drop spindles but I was there for a fleece!

Beforehand they have long tables with all the fleeces laid out so you can have a look (and touch!) before bidding. They also print out a catalogue at the last minute once they have all the information about the fleeces. Fleeces are sold by the pound, so you bid a price per pound that you want to pay.

There's a range of sizes, this time there were fleeces weighing from 3.2 to 11.2 pounds. I wanted a smaller fleece, in a continuing effort to not fill our house entirely with craft things.
I used my catalogue to write notes about the fleeces I was interested in bidding on. I didn't really know how much they would go for, so I didn't want to fixate on one special fleece and end up with nothing if it was too expensive. The prices ended up at $4.50/lb up to $21/lb.

There's a wide range, this is one of the white fleeces, soft and fluffy with a fine crimp:
This one was the grand prize winner, fine and soft with a tiny crimp:

This one went for $20 per pound, special and lovely

Surprisingly the prices weren't always based on whether the fleece had won a prize. Some of the top prize winners went for very reasonable prices of $6 - $7 per pound. I was writing down all the prices during the auction to try to see how much I should bid on my favourites. It was a bit nerve wracking. Near the end the prices seemed to be going right up, and I still hadn't won a fleece. There was a white one I wanted but it went up to $13 and I gave up.

I really wanted one of the natural grey/brown fleeces and ended up winning one of the last auctions. My fleece had long glossy wavy locks that I think is a Lincoln long hair. In then end I paid $7.50/lb and it was a first prize winner. I was very happy about that. It's so gorgeous, I can't wait to spin it up! I'll show how I'm going to process my fleece in my next post...

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