Fleece pictures and discussion...
May. 4th, 2026 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickAs I mentioned, I bought two fleeces at MD S&W over the weekend. I've also bought fleeces from "online" (etsy, ebay, facebook "raw wool for sale" groups) without actually touching them first. I've been pretty happy with damn near everything I've bought for myself.
First off, the dirty little truth of fleeces is that a wide variety of sheep fleece will process and spin OK for most spinners. There are trendy breeds and popular breeds and handspinner preferred breeds but honestly an average spinner will be OK with almost any "wool breed" sheep fleece of middling quality and most not-super-short "down breed" sheep fleece. Wool has a crimpy texture and almost wants to be spun. As a fiber, it is amenable, probably as a result of thousands of generations of sheep and shepherds and fiber artists and selective breeding and shit.
That said, folks still have preferences. Each spinner is different and even each planned project is different. So, the "right fleece" for a particular project might not be the right fleece for some other project. My ideal fleece is probably not your ideal fleece. And this is totally OK. There are shitbuckets of sheep breeds out there. My Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook has like 200 fiber animals in it, MOST of them sheep. Each sheep breed produces fiber, either as a primary product (wool breeds) or as a "one of two" products (called dual breed sheep) or as a sideline (meat and milk sheep). I'm not aware of sheep that do not make a fiber product, but maybe there are some. Dunno. Anyway, here we are concerned with sheep that make a fiber product, which is most of them.
For me, I do not like the ultra-fine wools (Merino & related).
Why the fuck not? They're super soft! Isn't super-soft the best?
Not for me, honestly. I wear my woolen garments hard enough to (frequently) need repair. Super-soft wool isn't gonna hold up to the lifestyle my woolens need to endure. (Fine wool drapes and pills and wears and just... does not take the abuse that my life contains.) My mitts and hats and sweaters endure a lifestyle that truly fine super-soft wool just doesn't handle well.
For me, a more "medium" fineness (something in the 22-31 micron department) is a good balance of "sturdy" and "not super scratchy". There are a ton of sheep breeds that make wool fitting into this range, so it's not like I'm limited in options.
I enjoy fleece with a strong lock structure because it pre-divides the wool into working amounts and I find it easier to wash and handle and use in the pre-divided working amounts of "lock".
I like a decent amount of crimp. Bouncy yarn is fun for me to make and knit with.
I don't mind some grease but if the fleece is too greasy, I scour first and card/spin second. The more medium fleeces are generally less greasy (lanolin) than the ultrafine merino-based fleece and my preference for working in the grease might also be driving me toward the medium texture fleece.
I like colored fleece (brown, buff, silver, gray, black) over white, though I do have some white/oatmeal colored fleece for contrast purposes. (It is way easier to get a nice white fleece than a nice colored fleece, there's just a deeper bench of white fleece out there.) There are lots of colors of sheep available, in lots of breeds of sheep. It is possible to get colored sheep fleece in a wide variety of wools. For this particular shopping expedition, I was looking for dark, iron gray colors.
I like a staple somewhere around 2.5 or 3" minimum because of the way I flick card. It's hard for me to hold a shorter fleece and flick card it because there's not enough to hold onto. I don't own a set of wool combs and I don't like traditional carding for woolen prep because the yarn is so disorganized and halo'd when you go to spin it and I do not like it.
Fleeces can be sold coated (this is where the sheep wore little... jackets for the duration to keep the fleece cleaner) or uncoated (sheep went naked). I do not have that many feelings about VM and uncoated fleece is cheaper, so... I shop uncoated and coated with equal enthusiasm. I am not going to lose my shit over a few small bits of hay or straw or whatever in the fleece. Some people take that a lot more seriously and they tend to buy the coated fleeces only.
So, with that in mind, let's take a look at the fleeces I picked up at MD S&W.
Fleece the first is a Perendale, grown in Maryland, sheep #2602 (This is the owner's sheep identifier. Sometimes the sheep have names, but sometimes they just have numbers. Either is fine.) It's an uncoated fleece, which it also says on the tag, along with the price.
Here's a picture of the bag o' fleece with sale tag. This is pretty much the view you get at the sale. You are not allowed to take the fleece out of the bag and unfurl it, but you can squish it a little and test one lock for soundness to make sure the fleece doesn't have a break. For any colored fleece, the buyer should expect a certain amount of color variation because the color is made by an animal, not a vat of dye:
And here's a detail of one of the Perendale locks to give you an idea of the fiber length:
Fleece the second is a Cheviot X (the X means a crossbred), sheep Cayenne #249, also an uncoated fleece. Here's a picture of the bag o' fleece with sale tag:
And here's a Cheviot X lock:
I know that both of these locks have, like, sun-faded clumpy brownish tips. You'd think that the sun-faded tips would ruin things but that's not the case. If a sheep is not wearing a jacket, the tips of colored fleece generally do show some sun-fading but they card out absolutely fine and the sun fading is not particularly apparent in the finished yarn. This is a fairly normal thing and should not be worried about. (Sheep are animals. It is important for them to be able to go outside in the fresh air and sunshine. It is important for them to be able to move around freely in a natural-ish way. Some sun-fading is inevitable with most colored sheep fleece if the sheep are allowed to be sheep.) White fleeces do not have the sun-fading issue.
Here's a picture of a lock from each fleece carded out and fluffed in a ready-for-spinning sort of way, you can see that the tips fluffed up without any issue.
I should have taken pictures of the fleece sale barn with the tables full of fleece and all the people browsing and stuff, but I did not.
From the MD S&W facebook page, this tidbit: Of the 726 Fleeces in the sale we sold 718 of them (98.9%)! So only a handful left unsold and those were returned to their producers who will do as they wish with them. Several may have had flaws that could explain why they didn't sell.. That is, fwiw, an excellent rate of sales. Like, astonishing. Good job, fleece sellers at MD S&W!
First off, the dirty little truth of fleeces is that a wide variety of sheep fleece will process and spin OK for most spinners. There are trendy breeds and popular breeds and handspinner preferred breeds but honestly an average spinner will be OK with almost any "wool breed" sheep fleece of middling quality and most not-super-short "down breed" sheep fleece. Wool has a crimpy texture and almost wants to be spun. As a fiber, it is amenable, probably as a result of thousands of generations of sheep and shepherds and fiber artists and selective breeding and shit.
That said, folks still have preferences. Each spinner is different and even each planned project is different. So, the "right fleece" for a particular project might not be the right fleece for some other project. My ideal fleece is probably not your ideal fleece. And this is totally OK. There are shitbuckets of sheep breeds out there. My Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook has like 200 fiber animals in it, MOST of them sheep. Each sheep breed produces fiber, either as a primary product (wool breeds) or as a "one of two" products (called dual breed sheep) or as a sideline (meat and milk sheep). I'm not aware of sheep that do not make a fiber product, but maybe there are some. Dunno. Anyway, here we are concerned with sheep that make a fiber product, which is most of them.
For me, I do not like the ultra-fine wools (Merino & related).
Why the fuck not? They're super soft! Isn't super-soft the best?
Not for me, honestly. I wear my woolen garments hard enough to (frequently) need repair. Super-soft wool isn't gonna hold up to the lifestyle my woolens need to endure. (Fine wool drapes and pills and wears and just... does not take the abuse that my life contains.) My mitts and hats and sweaters endure a lifestyle that truly fine super-soft wool just doesn't handle well.
For me, a more "medium" fineness (something in the 22-31 micron department) is a good balance of "sturdy" and "not super scratchy". There are a ton of sheep breeds that make wool fitting into this range, so it's not like I'm limited in options.
I enjoy fleece with a strong lock structure because it pre-divides the wool into working amounts and I find it easier to wash and handle and use in the pre-divided working amounts of "lock".
I like a decent amount of crimp. Bouncy yarn is fun for me to make and knit with.
I don't mind some grease but if the fleece is too greasy, I scour first and card/spin second. The more medium fleeces are generally less greasy (lanolin) than the ultrafine merino-based fleece and my preference for working in the grease might also be driving me toward the medium texture fleece.
I like colored fleece (brown, buff, silver, gray, black) over white, though I do have some white/oatmeal colored fleece for contrast purposes. (It is way easier to get a nice white fleece than a nice colored fleece, there's just a deeper bench of white fleece out there.) There are lots of colors of sheep available, in lots of breeds of sheep. It is possible to get colored sheep fleece in a wide variety of wools. For this particular shopping expedition, I was looking for dark, iron gray colors.
I like a staple somewhere around 2.5 or 3" minimum because of the way I flick card. It's hard for me to hold a shorter fleece and flick card it because there's not enough to hold onto. I don't own a set of wool combs and I don't like traditional carding for woolen prep because the yarn is so disorganized and halo'd when you go to spin it and I do not like it.
Fleeces can be sold coated (this is where the sheep wore little... jackets for the duration to keep the fleece cleaner) or uncoated (sheep went naked). I do not have that many feelings about VM and uncoated fleece is cheaper, so... I shop uncoated and coated with equal enthusiasm. I am not going to lose my shit over a few small bits of hay or straw or whatever in the fleece. Some people take that a lot more seriously and they tend to buy the coated fleeces only.
So, with that in mind, let's take a look at the fleeces I picked up at MD S&W.
Fleece the first is a Perendale, grown in Maryland, sheep #2602 (This is the owner's sheep identifier. Sometimes the sheep have names, but sometimes they just have numbers. Either is fine.) It's an uncoated fleece, which it also says on the tag, along with the price.
Here's a picture of the bag o' fleece with sale tag. This is pretty much the view you get at the sale. You are not allowed to take the fleece out of the bag and unfurl it, but you can squish it a little and test one lock for soundness to make sure the fleece doesn't have a break. For any colored fleece, the buyer should expect a certain amount of color variation because the color is made by an animal, not a vat of dye:
And here's a detail of one of the Perendale locks to give you an idea of the fiber length:
Fleece the second is a Cheviot X (the X means a crossbred), sheep Cayenne #249, also an uncoated fleece. Here's a picture of the bag o' fleece with sale tag:
And here's a Cheviot X lock:
I know that both of these locks have, like, sun-faded clumpy brownish tips. You'd think that the sun-faded tips would ruin things but that's not the case. If a sheep is not wearing a jacket, the tips of colored fleece generally do show some sun-fading but they card out absolutely fine and the sun fading is not particularly apparent in the finished yarn. This is a fairly normal thing and should not be worried about. (Sheep are animals. It is important for them to be able to go outside in the fresh air and sunshine. It is important for them to be able to move around freely in a natural-ish way. Some sun-fading is inevitable with most colored sheep fleece if the sheep are allowed to be sheep.) White fleeces do not have the sun-fading issue.
Here's a picture of a lock from each fleece carded out and fluffed in a ready-for-spinning sort of way, you can see that the tips fluffed up without any issue.
I should have taken pictures of the fleece sale barn with the tables full of fleece and all the people browsing and stuff, but I did not.
From the MD S&W facebook page, this tidbit: Of the 726 Fleeces in the sale we sold 718 of them (98.9%)! So only a handful left unsold and those were returned to their producers who will do as they wish with them. Several may have had flaws that could explain why they didn't sell.. That is, fwiw, an excellent rate of sales. Like, astonishing. Good job, fleece sellers at MD S&W!
