Fleece Prep Steps

I've been working with the Dorset/Friesian fleece that I was given. It's not a super long staple length,  or super soft, but it is long enough mostly just over 3 inches  and soft enough to make it fun to work with and really nice to spin.   The first step to processing a fleece is washing.   I've taken to doing a cold water soak to remove and loosen the dirt before washing with soap, degreaser and hot water to remove the remaining dirt and the lanolin.   It's worked beautifully in getting the fleece very clean, using fewer hot water washes and rinses. This is the cold water soak I started earlier today.   It's amazing how quickly the dirt starts to soak off.  The water is really, dirty now.   I'll drain it and wash it tomorrow.  After an overnight soak, it should be good to go.  I don't want to leave it too long or it will start fermenting.   This is good, if it's not in your laundry tub, in the back room of your house

I set up my laundry rack on the deck.   I have a roll of fibre glass window screening that I spread over the top bars and spread the fleece out to dry on top of it.   If it's breezy, I put another piece of screening over top of it and peg it down with some clothes pegs to keep the fleece from blowing away.   A bit of breeze will help it dry quickly, as does using a salad spinner, laundry spinner or even just putting the fleece in a mesh bag and whizzing it around quickly in a circle to extract the extra moisture.   It was nice enough out that this dried in a few hours.  I did check it part way through and pulled the few damp spots left, to expose them to sunshine and air.   It was all dried well before supper time.  This was good as I needed to have it for the spinning gathering the next day.  

  

The fleece does have a bit of vegetable matter, mostly bits of hay that are fairly easy to remove.   The worst VM that I've experienced was either in some Shetland fleeces, from barn kept sheep which was overwhelming to pick out, or the Jacob fleece I was given that had huge bugs in it,  Keds I think, and they were dead but oh, that was so unexpected and awful to deal with.  I gave the fleece back!

Anyway, much of the VM falls out while carding or pulling the locks apart before carding.  The rest mainly falls out or can be picked out while spinning.  The few bits that remain, are just part of the process.    

I've been mainly hand carding the fleece.  Although it's a little hard on the hands due to repetition and arthritis, it is still a lovely preparation.   I've put a bit through a drum carder too, which is faster, but a bit different to spin.   The skein is my sample and the bobbin is my next try at a slightly thicker yarn.

Short forward draw, not counting really, but 1 treadle per about a 1 1/2 inch draft.

This is my second sample.  I did two full bobbins and plied them together.  It's a slightly thicker grist that my first sample and will work for a sweater.   I'd planned on dyeing it after spinning as I don't know what colour I want yet.  Then today I started second guessing myself, thinking that I should have dyed it in the fleece and carded it together for a more even colour.  I'm almost finished another bobbin though, and have the remains of the second one as well,  so do I knit a patterned sweater?  Maybe a simple fair isle type design?   Or do I keep going as I've started.  

  Regardless, it's fun doing. a big project like this with a fleece this nice.   I got a bit distracted and a bit burnt out from the Master Spinner class, spending 6 years spinning to class requirement.  I've heard this is an issue with a lot of people who do that course.   However, having people to spin with again has re-ignited my passion for spinning, which I'm so happy for.    Now to find a knitting pattern for my new sweater.

A Rare but little rant

 I went over my friend's to try out her new huge electric carder.  It's double width at least of a home carder and has dual speed adjustments for the licker-in and the main drum.   She's worked out a spiffy way to draft off roving instead of batts, using a little bead as a diz.   It works amazingly well and the resulting roving is very professionally done.   It's light, fluffy, and easy to spin.

I brought the last of my bag of merino/cashmere/silk/nylon mill ends which were too hard to spin without processing.   I'd been hand carding them, but was frustrated enough to think about digging out my drum carder, when this play date came up.   It took a while, because it's still a fairly slow process, but what an amazing job.   I think we ran them through 3 times and we ended up processing just over 300g, into 3 huge bumps which filled 1/3 of a large plastic bin bag.   It was beautiful stuff.

I'd actually brought the mill ends in case we needed something else to card, as we were going to work on the black guild fleece.   The guild fleeces have turned into a rant worthy project.   I was away on holiday, so someone took my place on the field trip, to get the fleeces we were offered.  I'm hoping they didn't have a choice because that would make things much more acceptable.   We were supposed to get 5 fleeces, but the gal picking them up took one.  That's fine, because 4 fleeces is a lot of work so spreading the load is a good thing.    These are the fleeces that I was told weren't for me to work with during the summer and if they needed my help, they'd ask.   "Whatever"...still ticked me off, as I had the time and space to work with them then.  Anyway, in the fall, I got the rest of them as the person gatekeeping them decided she was tired of them and going to store them in a warm, dark spot - moth haven.   

The first fleece we had access to was washed by someone with little experience.   She was happy with her efforts, but there was still so much lanolin in it.  Plus with just a gentle tug, we found that a good part of the fleece had a break in it.  If you take a lock of the fleece with one end in each hand and give a tug on it, the fleece should hold together.  With a break in it, it will snap into two shorter pieces.  It's an unsound fleece and horrible to work with.  After you check the staple length, this is the next test to do, in several places. Not only that but parts of the fleece were felted.  A thinks that both issues are due to dunking and lifting a mesh bag of fleece during washing, instead of letting it soak openly.  So A took it home to rewash, and see what she could do with it.   She ended up trying to card it, then comb it and almost gave up.  With the new carder, she made something useable but only after running it through the electric carder 5 times!  It's a nice-ish knitting yarn, very rustic due to the ness, in a worsted/aran weight.   

The second fleece is also white but I washed some up with multiple washes and rinses.  I couldn't hand card it.  Literally was too compacted or felted to hand card.   It was a miserable mess on a small drum carder with coarse cloth.   I had to comb it and it was about 70% loss of fleece to useable fibre.  Not only that but it was hard on the hands, so not worth it at all.   I gave the washed fibre to A too see what her thoughts were and she couldn't get anything good out of it either.

The third fleece is a lamb's fleece with so much lanolin that 5 washings with soap and degreaser still left the fleece greasy.   I figured another wash would felt it up, just from overworking it, so I left it with A to see what she could do with it.  I'm sort of wondering if it should just be turned into compost because no fleece is worth that much time, effort and resources to process.

The  last fleece was the black one.  Of them all, it's by far the best.   Apparently someone washed it
before I got it, but that was the one that required 3 more washings and 3 rinses to actually get it clean.  We carded up just over 200g, into two bumps to see what our thoughts were for spinning this.   I'm half through my bit.  It spins up fairly easily.  There are many more neps than I'd like in it and not all can be picked out when spinning.  This means it's a lot thicker yarn than I'd normally spin with something like this.  It's full of vm, way more than I'd anticipated.   

If the guild was hoping we could spin up yarn for them to weave with it's going to be a non-event.  We've both already talked about how these fleeces are so bad that because of the number of hours required to turn them into useable yarns, that the people spinning them should have first dibs on them.  I'm not sure who would want to put that many frustrating hours into making a small amount of yarn, to give away to someone with no idea what went into making it.

Also, if someone gives you fleeces or you buy them, you have the right to check them to make sure they are worth the amount of work needed to make them into useable yarn.  I've gotten fleeces from the Canadian Wool Co-op and straight from the farm  which required only a couple of washes and rinses to bring up bright, easy to use fibre with almost no vm.  They can be a joy to work with.   Before you put your money down, you should be able to check the staple length and the integrity of the locks before you buy, or at least have an honest description from the seller.

Spinning the new fleece

There has been lots of fleece washing happening.   Everyday I try to get at least 7 or preferably 14 little packets of locks washed.   It doesn't always happen because while it is only a few minutes here and there, the soaking between washes and rinses takes up a lot of time.

In between I have been flick carding piles of washed locks and either spinning them directly or putting them through the drum carder to make batts.   I tried making a batt without flick carding, but it wasn't as nice as running the opened locks through the carder.  The flick carded locks, only take 2 passes through the drum carder to make really nice, fluffy batts.

After I take the batts off the carder, I roll them up and pinch a bit of fibre from the middle of the side of the roll and pull it into a long strip of sliver or roving.  I roll it into a little nest and it is ready to spin.   I've been using a point of contact long draw to make a fluffy yarn which is fairly quick to spin.

3 ply woollen spun using roving pulled from batts

 This yarn would make really nice mittens and hats.  It is a 3 ply woollen spun and is soft, light and lofty.   I don't really like spinning 3 ply yarns, simply because that 3rd ply seems to be to be when I should be plying, but it is worth the effort as it does make a nice yarn.

4 ply chained yarn

A 4 ply chained yarn has an interesting texture and is nice and round.   It knits up nicely.  For some reason, despite being a 4 ply, it doesn't seem to be quite as daunting as a 3 ply to me.  Perhaps that is because I can have a plying break after 2 bobbins of singles.

Chain plied or Navajo plied yarn

Chain ply or Navajo plied yarn.   This has to be my least favourite yarn.   It is a single, plied into a 3 ply, using a finger crochet type looping technique.   There is a tiny bump where each loop ends and the next begins.   I find it irksome.  I spun it first, to get it out of the way.   I didn't want to keep sampling and knowing it would be last on my list.  I thought it might spoil my enjoyment of spinning this lovely fleece.


Off to flick card more locks - 

Fibre Processing Comparison

Way back in October, I had a bunch of Merino and some lovely fawn alpaca.  I was playing with the blending board and pulled off a bunch of rolags.  Because the Merino and Alpaca were of similar staple lengths and about 3-4 inches long, I decided to practice the long draw.   
The last skein in the photo is the first that I spun.   I used a traditional English type long draw or double drafting.  The rolags spun easily though you can see the uneveness in the blending.  It was a really nice skein and relatively consistent. 

 However, I realized then that I had more than enough fibre to do a bit of an experiment.  I divided up the rest of the rolags.  I ran one set through the drum carder a single time and the second set through the drum carder twice.   I rolled up each batt and attenuated the fibres from the centre.   I then spun the resulting roving with a similar long draw technique to the first skein.  

The first skein, directly from the blending board rolags is fairly consistent in grist and there are distinct areas of Alpaca and Merino.   The skein made from the drum carded batt carded only once, was much more difficult to keep consistent in grist.  There were still patchy areas which just wouldn't behave the way I wanted them too.  The third skein, which was from the twice drumcarded fibre, was much more consistent win grist, well blended and uniform.  

The skeins are all nice.  They are all close enough in grist to be used in a single project.  There are differences though, which show that you really do need to take fibre preparation into consideration as one of the factors in spinning yarn.  It was a fun little experiment.

I started knitting a pair of mittens with the fibre.  It knit up easily and is very soft.   I just got the tails sewn into this mitten.   I went to grab the second skein and I can't find it anywhere.  It seems that in the pre-holiday rush, my skeins were put in a safe place.   Now I have a single mitten that I cannot wet finish or block because I need it for a pattern for it's mate, whenever I find the missing skeins.

Playing With Colour

 

Playing with making rolags and puni  of different colour and fibre combinations.

 More colours here and elsewhere.  They are starting to pile up.  The big consideration is making enough of one colour combination to actually have enough fibre for more than sampling.  I was surprised at how much time it takes to make good rolags this way.  I've seen some very messy ones which look like they'd be difficult to spin.  These spin so nicely that it's worth the effort.   It adds a nice change and twist to fibre processing.   It's a bit easier to manipulate the colours in a precise way than the drum carder or hackles.

 Playing with new project bag designs.  While I was making these, I was sure I wouldn't like them.  However the moment they were done, I loved them.  The larger one is big enough for a small project, notions and a pattern.  Awesome!  

One sock done and the other is started.  I was hoping to get these done before the end of September but I'll have to actually set aside some time to work on them if I want to meet that goal.  The cuff is a bit fussy, but once I got the grid work pattern worked out, it was super easy and the foot patterning became intuitive.  I love the use of the single cable travelling stitch, which I can do without a cable needle.  It's fast, fun and adds a nice bit of decoration to the sock, without any fuss or muss.

I spent an afternoon washing Alpaca.  It took over 2 days to dry because of the weather and the fact that I let the top and the bottom part of the fibre salad spinner get separated thus couldn't spin out the excess water.  Yay me!

The truck broke down, the day before I was going to head out for a day at Westfield.  It was Saturday morning and that's a dreadful time for getting emergency repair service.  We only have the one vehicle, so not fixing it wasn't an option.    However, we were 3 feet from the repair shop parking lot and they could fit us in but we'd have to wait 10 minutes, was that okay?  So after 3 hours in the waiting room, without my knitting, a book or some handsewing (argh), we had the truck back, with a shiny new alternator.  It wouldn't have been so bad but less than 2 weeks before, we replaced the alternator on my son's car and had to get new tires.   Bad things come in threes?  I hope that's it for a while.