Processing the Wool

So being the crafty addict that I am, I’d always planned to have sheep and grow my own wool (and meat).  When we first moved here, I was on the look out for a spinning wheel.  I found one cheaply on Trade Me that only needed a new drive string - very cheaply as it turned out, I paid $50 for this and they sell new for between $500 and $600!

My spinning wheel.

At the time, I had no wool to spin and started to look for that on Trade Me too.  There were so many new to me technical terms on there that I was just confused.  95% vm free - uh huh.  Alpaca Saddle Fleece - yup, sure.  Top 20.5 microns - I’m guessing that’s the thickness of a strand?  Skirted fleece - nah, lost me completely.  Then I was given a bag of llama wool from one of Hubby’s workmates.  Awesome, just what I needed.

The next thing though, according to all the information I had, was to card it.  I read through books that described the process using combs and cat brushes.  I just got a big mess.  I mentioned it to a neighbour, who told me that some people spin without carding and do just fine.  I started to play with it and practice.  It was uneven and a bit messy, but I got there.  I made a pair of socks out of my first spinning efforts.

Llama wool socks.

I hadn’t realised that plying is essential.  A single strand doesn’t have any flexibility or real strength, my socks were warm but stiff and soon wore big holes.  I played with plying my yarn with some wool I’d been given - I have several skeins of single spun (unplyed?  Whatever the techie term is) wool, but mixing royal blue with brown looked like a terrible choice in carpet wool.

I finally bought another bobbin so that I could ply the wool I was spinning and bought a lazy kate to go with them and make this task so much simpler.  I was off and spinning.

A friend gave me a big fadge (one of those big square wool sack things) full of alpaca fleece that she had knocking around from when she used to have alpacas.  She said it was probably a bit mothy and freezing it before use might be a good idea.  It took me a while to get it out and even think about working with it.  I’d been given another couple of boxes of yarns etc by my Mum when she was clearing out Grandma’s old stuff.

I finally decided to check out youtube for carding - why hadn’t I thought of that before?  It took a while before I found someone showing the techniques for flick carding - another technical term, this time it’s using a small single carding brush like a cat brush.  But find it I did and suddenly it all made sense.  I started to flick card the alpaca fleece.  There seemed to be a lot of wastage.  The moths had been at the fleece and so there were lots of small short locks that were nearly impossible to flick card adequately and other small bits that just broke off and left me covered in a layer of fine fluff.

Alpaca fleece with the cat brush (at the bottom of the pic).

Then we had these two feed sacks of sheep’s wool from my sheep.  They needed some sort of processing, the dog kept pulling it out of the sacks and chewing on the daggy bits that had somehow made it into the bag too. 

I found another youtube video about washing the fleece - something else that seems to be poorly described in my otherwise wonderful books.  I spent about an hour picking through maybe quarter of the fleece I had, pulling out dried poo, trimming off the daggy dark bits and picking out most of the grass and seed (otherwise known as vm - vegetable matter).  I filled the laundry sink with hot hot water, a very liberal amount of dishwashing liquid and then my fleece.  I left it to soak overnight.  The water was a hideous light brown colour and the small amount of foam had gone a bit manky and fatty.  I let the water out, carefully holding my wet fleece away from the plug hole and refilled it.  The water immediately went slightly brown again, so I added more dishwash and left it to soak again.  The next time, the water stayed pretty clear, so I let it rinse until it was nearly cold and drained out the water.  I threw the whole lot into the washing machine and put it on spin to take out any excess water.

It was a very hot sunny day, so I spread the fleece out on the glass topped outdoor table to dry.  As it dried, I sat down with my cat brush and started to flick card it.  This did make it seem to dry quicker but I spent hours at it and barely made a dent in the pile.  This was proving to be a huge exercise in frustration more than anything else.

Washed fleece drying in the sun

I jumped online and had a look at Trade Me again.  It’s my go-to for anything I need, although I have learned to check first what things are actually worth new in the shops!  Some people just go a bit crazy in the bidding competition type thing and suddenly a used item sells for more than twice it’s worth.  There was a drum carder (worth $570+ new) that closed in 5 hours and was only sitting at $21.  I placed an autobid of $50 - it immediately jumped to $51.  Someone else had an existing autobid for more.  So I went straight to my maximum of $75 and it jumped to $76.  When it finally closed, it went for $137 which was still a bloody good deal, just more than I was willing to spend.

My new hand carders - absolute life savers!

I rang Hubby and asked him if he could stop in at Hands in town and pick up a set of wool carders for me.  I knew they were $75 there and would be far more efficient than my tiny cat brush.  He agreed and asked me to ring and have them put away at the counter for him as he had no clue what to look or ask for!

He came home with my new carders and I’ve been madly making rolags since.  Rolags is yet another technical term for a roll of carded fleece.  It is much quicker, far less wastage and makes spinning the fleece a whole lot easier.  Even the shorter alpaca fleece is spinning up far more evenly than I’ve been able to manage up till now.

A bag full of Alpaca fleece rolags

Another fabulous idea I saw recently in another blog (do check out the whole blog - Anna is lovely, very clever and the Mum of one of Miss Eight's closest friends) was to make a duvet inner from carded wool.

I guess the next thing is to figure out what I’ll be making with all the lovely, homespun, slightly uneven wool.  And to play with natural dyes.  And maybe some felting.  And weaving.  We’ll see.