The ground has been frozen
for over a week here in Brittany and now the thaw has come so has the
rain. There's not much getting done in the gardens, so as promised, a
post on how I process my raw fleece into wearable garment
Our sheep are sheared once a year at the end of May begining of June
 |
| Shearing 2013 |
I skirt (take off all the
dung tags and scraggy bits) the fleece and remove as much vegetable
matter as I can.
I use two different
methods of souring/washing the fleeces depending on what I want to
use the yarn for and if I want to have the lanolin left in.
Method 1
I wash the fleece in hot
water and soap. This removes all suint which is natural grease
formed from dried perspiration found in the fleece and lanolin.
Sheep’s fleece contains both suint and lanolin which are to
different things. Rinse a few times and leave to dry outside on
racks
Method 2
I leave the fleece to soak
in cold water taken from the well for 7 days, letting nature do the
work. During this cold soak the suint and dirt breaks down and
washes out of the fleece, leaving a clean fleece that contains the
natural lanolin found in sheep’s fleece. I then leave it for a day
in well water to rinse, I will do a couple of rinses. After a week
of soaking the fleece smells like a farmyard but it disappears out of
the fleece once it its air dried outside on racks, that’s how you
can tell that the fleece is completely dry ready for storing or
processing.
Once the wool is dry its
ready for processing into yarn. I card it or comb it ready for
spinning.
If the wool has a lot of
straw and chaff in it then I like to use combs as the straw and chaff
will drop out in the process, if the wool is free from vegetable
matter then I card it on my drum carder.
Once the wool is combed or
carded its spun into singles in a clockwise direction then two
singles are plied together anticlockwise, to make a balanced yarn.
The yarn is then left to soak in warm water with a drop of dish soap
for about 20mins, rinsed and hung out to dry this sets the twist.
Once the yarn is dry its ready for knitting or dying.
I do use commercial dyes
and if done correctly all of the colour is taken up into the yarn and
the clear water that's left can be disposed of.
There you have it, a brief summery of my way of processing raw fleece. Its quite a time consuming
process but well worth it as we can wear pure wool sock and jumpers
to keep us warm in the cold weather at very little or no cost.
Some of the garments I've made with my hand spun wool
The socks in the photo below I made about 8 years ago and I knitted new feet on them as the original ones had been darned too many times
Until next time, Blessings to all
Vanessa
