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Dec. 16th, 2007 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickOn a rather lighter note, and specifically for my mother, who wanted a brief rundown of sheep and wool...
Wool yarn comes from sheep. There are a lot of different kinds of sheep, some of which are raised for meat and some of which are raised for wool and some of which are dual-purpose. You can learn a lot about different sheep breeds here. Some breeds of wool sheep are Bluefaced Leicester, Border Leicester (these were the sheep in the movie "Babe", about the pig that herds sheep), Romney, Corriedale, Merino, Cormo, Lincoln, Shetland, and Cotswold. Not all sheep are white -- in fact, some shepherds breed for colored sheep on purpose. Colors of sheep that are not white include brown, black, silver, buff or tan (called "moorit"), and shades in between those colors. The sheep that are brown or black or whatever stay that color all the time and their fur will not fade or wash out.
Most sheep are shorn once a year, in the early springtime. This is so that the sheep are not stressed by the heat in the summertime but will have long coats to keep them warm in the winter. The length of wool that a sheep grows in a year depends on the breed of sheep, but a staple (length) of 4 to 6 inches is common for Romney sheep. The amount of wool a shepherd gets from one sheep depends on the kind of sheep but a typical Romney sheep will produce between 8 and 12 pounds of fleece in a year. A fleece is just the fur, cut off the sheep without hurting the sheep. This 8 to 12 pound weight DOES NOT include the skin of the sheep (because that's still attached to the sheep) but DOES include the grease and ick on the fur. After washing, the fleece weighs about 70% of what it started out weighing, so you'd get about five and a half to eight and a half pounds of actual fleece once it was washed. The rest would be grease and dirt and stuff that would come out in the wash.
Sheep fleece can be bought on eBay or via assorted groups online that offer marketplaces for raw wool. You can buy fleece directly from the shepherds and sheep farms that raise it. You can buy fleece at fiber festivals like Maryland Sheep And Wool and frequently at county or state agricultural fairs. Good-quality handspinning fleece from sheep that have been kept clean (they wear lightweight blankets to keep the dirt off their fur) for people to clean and card and spin at home should cost about ten dollars a pound (raw and uncleaned). Thus, a sheep's worth of nice Romney fleece should cost about eighty to a hundred and twenty dollars -- if it's top-notch nice stuff. If it's grubbier or has more hay or ick in it, it will cost less. Mostly, shepherds do not make enough money selling fleeces to pay for the cost of keeping their sheep so they also sell lambs and also the shepherds may have other, non-farming jobs as well.
From sheep to yarn...
1. Shear the sheep. This means to cut the fur off of the sheep, without hurting it, and this is still mostly done by hand. Most farms hire sheep shearers to do this because it's a specialized job and hard work to boot. There is a video of sheep shearing here and there are some nice step-by-step pictures here.
2. Skirt the fleece. This means to pull off the icky bits so that all you will be working with is the nice stuff. Fleece that is removed during skirting is from the parts around the legs, belly, and neck of the sheep, where it's all gross.
3. Wash the fleece. This involves lots of hot water and soap. You make a sink full of hot water (I run hot water until it's about half-full and then I add a kettle of boiling water) and add soap and add some fleece (in a net bag, so that it doesn't get all over everything) and let it soak for forty minutes or so. You can't stir or swish very much because that will felt the wool. Once it's soaked, it needs to be rinsed in plain water. Usually three cycles of wash/rinse is enough. You keep doing it until the water runs clear at the end of a rinse and the fleece looks white. There is a lot of fleece on one sheep and I wash a little at a time. Doing it all-at-once would be way more washing than I'd like to do.
4. Dry the fleece. This takes a couple of days. I just press the water out of the net bags of fleece and hang them up to dry. If I remember, I fluff the bags every day until they are dry.
5. Card or comb the fleece. Combing and carding are mechanical processes that fluff up the wool and make all the bits of hay and stuff fall out. It's pretty amazing how much a lock of fleece fluffs up after carding or combing.
6. Make roving. Once the wool is carded or has been combed, it is made into roving by pulling from one end of the carded or combed fleece to stretch out a rope of ready-to-spin wool. Roving is the product you get when the carded or combed material is stretched out into an even, working-size, fluffy rope that is ready-to-spin. Handspinners can also buy roving pre-done if they do not want to process their own wool from right off the sheep.
7. Spin fiber into yarn singles. Stretch out one end of the roving thin and tuck it through the loop on your spindle. Spin the spindle. Let the twist travel up the fiber, making it into yarn. Pull out some more of the roving (this is called drafting) so that the twist can creep up it little by little. As you make yarn, the spindle will drop down. When it's close to the floor, pick it up and wind the yarn onto it. There is a heck of a lot of good information on drop spindles AND on spinning wheels at joyofhandspinning.com, with videos. (Mom, I mention this not only because the information is spot-on and well presented but ALSO because the narrator and person doing the demonstrating is an excellent role model for your target audience.) What is made when you are spinning is called a single. It is not plied yet and, while it could be used to knit, it is unbalanced and would make the knitting all wonky.
8. Ply singles into yarn. Plying means putting together your singles and twisting them OPPOSITE of how they were spun. So, if you spun the singles clockwise, you would ply them counterclockwise. Yarns may be two or three (or more) ply. Singles can be plied using a drop spindle or a spinning wheel, doesn't matter.
9. Wind yarn onto niddy-noddy. A niddy-noddy is a device that helps you wind yarn into a skein. It's shaped like a T on either end, one of the T's turned 90 degrees so that it cannot lay flat. You wrap the yarn around the niddy-noddy to make a 2-yard loop. Keep wrapping until all the yarn is wrapped. Tie the skeins at four (or more) points to prevent tangles. Then, remove the skein from the niddy-noddy and you are ready to set the twist. (Diagram for a PVC niddy-noddy is here.)
10. Set the twist. Get your new yarn wet. Soak it in hot water, then wring it slightly and soak it in cold water. Slap the skein hard against the side of the sink or tub a couple of times. Stretch it between your hands and yank firmly, then rotate it a bit and yank again. This mistreatment of the yarn spreads out the twist from plying and helps your yarn be more even and well-behaved. When you're done abusing the yarn, hang it to dry with a soup can in the skein to weight it. Wait for the yarn to dry.
Now, you're ready to use it in a knit, crochet, weaving, or other project.
Wool yarn comes from sheep. There are a lot of different kinds of sheep, some of which are raised for meat and some of which are raised for wool and some of which are dual-purpose. You can learn a lot about different sheep breeds here. Some breeds of wool sheep are Bluefaced Leicester, Border Leicester (these were the sheep in the movie "Babe", about the pig that herds sheep), Romney, Corriedale, Merino, Cormo, Lincoln, Shetland, and Cotswold. Not all sheep are white -- in fact, some shepherds breed for colored sheep on purpose. Colors of sheep that are not white include brown, black, silver, buff or tan (called "moorit"), and shades in between those colors. The sheep that are brown or black or whatever stay that color all the time and their fur will not fade or wash out.
Most sheep are shorn once a year, in the early springtime. This is so that the sheep are not stressed by the heat in the summertime but will have long coats to keep them warm in the winter. The length of wool that a sheep grows in a year depends on the breed of sheep, but a staple (length) of 4 to 6 inches is common for Romney sheep. The amount of wool a shepherd gets from one sheep depends on the kind of sheep but a typical Romney sheep will produce between 8 and 12 pounds of fleece in a year. A fleece is just the fur, cut off the sheep without hurting the sheep. This 8 to 12 pound weight DOES NOT include the skin of the sheep (because that's still attached to the sheep) but DOES include the grease and ick on the fur. After washing, the fleece weighs about 70% of what it started out weighing, so you'd get about five and a half to eight and a half pounds of actual fleece once it was washed. The rest would be grease and dirt and stuff that would come out in the wash.
Sheep fleece can be bought on eBay or via assorted groups online that offer marketplaces for raw wool. You can buy fleece directly from the shepherds and sheep farms that raise it. You can buy fleece at fiber festivals like Maryland Sheep And Wool and frequently at county or state agricultural fairs. Good-quality handspinning fleece from sheep that have been kept clean (they wear lightweight blankets to keep the dirt off their fur) for people to clean and card and spin at home should cost about ten dollars a pound (raw and uncleaned). Thus, a sheep's worth of nice Romney fleece should cost about eighty to a hundred and twenty dollars -- if it's top-notch nice stuff. If it's grubbier or has more hay or ick in it, it will cost less. Mostly, shepherds do not make enough money selling fleeces to pay for the cost of keeping their sheep so they also sell lambs and also the shepherds may have other, non-farming jobs as well.
From sheep to yarn...
1. Shear the sheep. This means to cut the fur off of the sheep, without hurting it, and this is still mostly done by hand. Most farms hire sheep shearers to do this because it's a specialized job and hard work to boot. There is a video of sheep shearing here and there are some nice step-by-step pictures here.
2. Skirt the fleece. This means to pull off the icky bits so that all you will be working with is the nice stuff. Fleece that is removed during skirting is from the parts around the legs, belly, and neck of the sheep, where it's all gross.
3. Wash the fleece. This involves lots of hot water and soap. You make a sink full of hot water (I run hot water until it's about half-full and then I add a kettle of boiling water) and add soap and add some fleece (in a net bag, so that it doesn't get all over everything) and let it soak for forty minutes or so. You can't stir or swish very much because that will felt the wool. Once it's soaked, it needs to be rinsed in plain water. Usually three cycles of wash/rinse is enough. You keep doing it until the water runs clear at the end of a rinse and the fleece looks white. There is a lot of fleece on one sheep and I wash a little at a time. Doing it all-at-once would be way more washing than I'd like to do.
4. Dry the fleece. This takes a couple of days. I just press the water out of the net bags of fleece and hang them up to dry. If I remember, I fluff the bags every day until they are dry.
5. Card or comb the fleece. Combing and carding are mechanical processes that fluff up the wool and make all the bits of hay and stuff fall out. It's pretty amazing how much a lock of fleece fluffs up after carding or combing.
6. Make roving. Once the wool is carded or has been combed, it is made into roving by pulling from one end of the carded or combed fleece to stretch out a rope of ready-to-spin wool. Roving is the product you get when the carded or combed material is stretched out into an even, working-size, fluffy rope that is ready-to-spin. Handspinners can also buy roving pre-done if they do not want to process their own wool from right off the sheep.
7. Spin fiber into yarn singles. Stretch out one end of the roving thin and tuck it through the loop on your spindle. Spin the spindle. Let the twist travel up the fiber, making it into yarn. Pull out some more of the roving (this is called drafting) so that the twist can creep up it little by little. As you make yarn, the spindle will drop down. When it's close to the floor, pick it up and wind the yarn onto it. There is a heck of a lot of good information on drop spindles AND on spinning wheels at joyofhandspinning.com, with videos. (Mom, I mention this not only because the information is spot-on and well presented but ALSO because the narrator and person doing the demonstrating is an excellent role model for your target audience.) What is made when you are spinning is called a single. It is not plied yet and, while it could be used to knit, it is unbalanced and would make the knitting all wonky.
8. Ply singles into yarn. Plying means putting together your singles and twisting them OPPOSITE of how they were spun. So, if you spun the singles clockwise, you would ply them counterclockwise. Yarns may be two or three (or more) ply. Singles can be plied using a drop spindle or a spinning wheel, doesn't matter.
9. Wind yarn onto niddy-noddy. A niddy-noddy is a device that helps you wind yarn into a skein. It's shaped like a T on either end, one of the T's turned 90 degrees so that it cannot lay flat. You wrap the yarn around the niddy-noddy to make a 2-yard loop. Keep wrapping until all the yarn is wrapped. Tie the skeins at four (or more) points to prevent tangles. Then, remove the skein from the niddy-noddy and you are ready to set the twist. (Diagram for a PVC niddy-noddy is here.)
10. Set the twist. Get your new yarn wet. Soak it in hot water, then wring it slightly and soak it in cold water. Slap the skein hard against the side of the sink or tub a couple of times. Stretch it between your hands and yank firmly, then rotate it a bit and yank again. This mistreatment of the yarn spreads out the twist from plying and helps your yarn be more even and well-behaved. When you're done abusing the yarn, hang it to dry with a soup can in the skein to weight it. Wait for the yarn to dry.
Now, you're ready to use it in a knit, crochet, weaving, or other project.
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Date: 2007-12-17 01:31 am (UTC)