Fleece Project Milestone

Recap: Way back in July 2012, a co-worker gave me four fleeces from his pet sheep.  Much washing was done, a little carding and characterization, and then, with me slightly burnt out from all the prep work, the fleece went into hibernation.



Then, this past January, I pulled out some of each fleece, and started carding.  Well, picking the fleece (flicking with a dog brush, removing more vegetable matter, fluffing) and THEN carding.







I ended up with a stack of batts, which I turned into fauxlags, because I wanted to learn how to spin longdraw.

Then I spent some time with Jacey Bogg's Craftsy Class on drafting techniques.  I was spinning up some laceweight, and it greatly improved my technique and speed.

Also had a new spinning wheel, so I figured I'd use this to get used to it as well - direct drive vs drive band, and a few other differences.

Started with the gray wool.  It drafted very smoothly, and I thought I had it all figured out.



Moved onto the black wool, where I learned that I didn't have it all figured out.  My fiber prep was also not as thorough as it might have been - lots of short bits left in, and it could have used another pass through the drum carder.  But I persevered, and ended up with yarn.  This fiber turned out to be a bit more fun, because at times it was like drafting chewing gum, and I could easily double draft out the slubs.  Lots of lanolin still in this fleece.

Finally, the moorit wool.  It had been a real pain to pick before carding, because it was slightly felted at the sheared end.

By now, the spinning wheel and I were getting along very well, and the actual spinning moved right along.

As I mentioned before, there was still a lot of lanolin present, and I really wanted it gone.  After much investigation on Ravelry, I ordered a bottle of Unicorn Power Scour, and the yarn got its finishing bath in that, with a hot water rinse/soak afterward.







I am happy with the end result.  This is the squishiest yarn I have ever spun.

Learnings: fiber prep, fiber prep, fiber prep.
Next tool: a wool picker, although I'll have to give the fleece another scour before I use it.
Future ideas:  I've got some brightly colored silk, and commercially dyed fleece to blend it to make the yarn more interesting.

A Bit of Fleece Spinning Characterization

As the fleeces have been drying - and they are ALL getting another wash*, in laundry detergent and Borax -  I've been pulling off pieces, carding them with the hand cards, and doing a little spinning with the drop spindle.





*they still smelled way too agricultural.  Much, much better now.

Drowning Wookies

Brian: "Mom, why does it look like you are drowning a wookie in the downstairs bathtub?"

After I picked myself up off the floor... Well, let's start at the beginning.

At my now-former job, I had a co-worker who had chickens.  So I got eggs.  And we got to talking, and it came about that he had sheep.  Four sheep, pets.  Oh, when you shear them, could I buy a fleece?  Or two?  And this conversation went on for several months.  There were two black sheep, one reddish sheep, and a gray sheep.

One day he brought in a small bag of fleece that the sheep had shed around the barn.  I got around to washing it, carding it (oooh! bought some hand cards!), spinning it, and taking the resultant 3gr of yarn back into work.  He thought that was pretty cool.



And then after many months, the sheep were sheared, and I ended up with all four fleeces (!)  Right off the sheep, so I've now moved as far down the fiber food chain as is possible without raising the sheep myself.





First, the fleeces had to be skirted and washed.  Skirting is where you cut off all the undesirable stuff around the edges (don't ask), and pick out all the short bits of fleece.  I will say the gray sheep was the pigpen of the bunch.



Washing.  Hmm.  Consulting the internets, it seemed that I should have kept my top-loader washer.  Oh well, there's always the bathtub.  Bought some big mesh laundry bags, and put half a fleece in each.  Soaked the fleece without soap for awhile.  That is a lot of dirt.  Then two soaks/rinses with liquid dish soap.  The dirt from the gray fleece seemed endless.  Hence the drowning wookie comment.



Now, how to dry it?  Turns out, we have a big screen from the just-replaced screen door - lay that over a couple of chairs outside, and it makes an expedient drying rack.



Three fleeces down, one more to wash and dry.  Then lots of flicking, picking out grass, and on to carding.  I will likely cut off the bleached/stained fleece first.  Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, back on the fiber front...

A longish while back, Rebecca and Jessica presented me with 20 oz of alpaca - 10 oz of Suri and 10 oz of Brown Huacaya.  The brown may have been dyed; they weren't clear.  In any case, 10 oz was too much for socks or a scarf, and not quite enough for anything else :-)



But wait!  I could blend it with another fiber and have MORE.  I eventually bought 8 oz of a mahogany heather colonial wool top (love it when they say that, what kind of sheep is that, exactly?) and started casting around for a drum carder.  Not to BUY one, but borrow it for awhile.



Turns out that Dana in my cycling club has a drum carder.  Actually it is Dana and his wife, and they've got wheels, the drum carder and a couple of honking big looms.  I took myself over for a tour (I am so jealous), got a drum carder lesson and off I went.  (That's me, I don't always know what I'm doing, but usually I can figure it out, to some extent)





So, last summer, carded away, and ended up with 18 batts of blended fiber.  

I finally pulled out the wheel and got back to spinning it up.  The first few batts were not much fun to spin.  It just didn't draft very smoothly.  But I got halfway through and had to stop and ply, because I don't have enough bobbins to hold 18 oz of singles, plus more bobbins to ply onto.



Turns out it was me.  The last 3 batts have been amazing.  I turned it into one long strip, then did some serious predrafting before starting spinning.  It now almost spins itself.  This is SO COOL! (Maybe I should take a class...)



I was aiming to replicate Reynolds Turnberry Tweed, which a very kind fellow Raveler send me a sample of.  I think I'm pretty much there.

The yarn wants to be a vest, but hasn't said which one.