Wool Fumes (With Apologies to the Yarn Harlot)

That’s the only way I can explain it…must have been wool fumes….

Tuesday we discovered what happens when the sump pump goes out in the basement.  I walked down to find 1/2 inch of standing water.  We switch into emergency mode, salvage things on the floor that were the most valuable such as my dogs scent articles (made of leather and metal), some old video tapes, and wool stored down there.

Three unwashed fleeces got wet, others washed and unwashed, were just fine.  So today I started washing these fleeces.  All three were just wet and two should wash up just fine.

But the third…I mean…what the heck was I thinking when I bought it.  Yes it was a rare breed and yes I was at a fiber festival.  But after 20 years of buying fleeces I KNOW better.  The longwool fleece was caked in mud and sheep poo so bad that parts of the fleece even after a 30 minute soak in 120 degree water with Dawn was still caked.  The mud areas did wash up to expose a fleece full of burrs and hay.  I carefully looked through the fleece, nope the whole thing was like this.  Forget it…my time was too important.  It went in the dumpster along with another rare breed fleece I bought off of EBay that was full of keds (aka sheep ticks).

So, how does someone like me end up with a fleece like that?  Part of it was the rarity of the breed, I was just happy to find it.  The other part was temporary insanity caused by wool fumes.   I might have been tempted to ship it off to a processor, but with it wet I wasn’t going spend time drying the durn thing just to have a processor ship it back to me.

Okay what are my suggestions for finding a good fleece?

Have a friend help you

If you have never bought a raw fleece before and you are at a fiber festival, hook up with someone who has experience buying fleeces.  Seek out recommendations from others if you are mail ordering or bidding on EBay.  Also talk to them about what they expect from fleeces.  They may have very different ideas about what is “clean enough” than you do.

Avoid lots of vegetable matter

Even longwool fleeces can have problems with vegetable matter (vm).  It does not have to be perfectly clean.  Right now I have a fine wool fleece I’m sending off to a specific processor because it full of vm and I know that they do a good job removing it and there is nothing else wrong with the fleece.  I also find that I’m allergic to cedar needles and I avoid any fleece that has cedar needles in it.

Just say no to bugs

If the fleece arrives and it has bugs in it, such as sheep keds or live wool moths.  Quarantine the fleece away from your stash and contact the seller immediately.  Ahem, if I had really looked at that EBay fleece when I got it in the mail I would have found the keds and contacted the seller immediately.  Instead I looked at it and didn’t see anything and put it aside.  Keds can’t live off the the host so should already be dead, but wool moths and carpet beetles can and will munch on your fiber stash.    Keds are a management problem and cause problems beyond ruining the wool and skin of the animal.  Scurf (dandruff) can be a sign of sheep and goat lice and is a royal pain in the rear to get out.  I find it more common in mohair fleeces than others.

What about mud?

Mud most of the time comes out.  Sometimes it can stain though so you will have to consider that on a fleece by fleece basis.  Wash a lock if you can before buying.  Sometimes that moorit looking fleece is actually cream under all that mud!

Skirt liberally

Don’t be afraid of asking for a better skirted fleece.  You don’t need to buy their barnyard.  But be realistic.  If you are getting the fleece for $4 a pound you can afford to skirt that yourself.  If you are paying $20 pound then I would expect a much cleaner fleece to begin with.

Check strength of the fiber

Do a snap test with the fiber to find out if it has a weak place.  If it does pass on it or if you got it through the mail contact the seller.  That should have been disclosed when the fleece was sold.

Don’t be afraid to admit you can’t process it yourself

After buying a fleece and starting to process it you just may realize that you hate processing or that you don’t have time to process the entire 8 pound cormo fleece.  There are many very capable and experienced processors out there happy to turn your fleece into roving or batts.

I hope that this short tutorial will help you this shearing season.  It’s spring in the swamps of NE Illinois, and I need to get back to cleaning my basement and washing those fleeces.

We Came, We Learned, We Shopped

After dealing with insanity all week at work I was more than ready to take Friday off so I could go take my first spinning workshops in over a decade. Its not like I haven’t taken any workshops since then, just none spinning related.

Of course the first challenge was packing….where is this book…should I take this one? Where is that batt? Okay now to get the GPSr ready for the trip and the rest of the stuff I need for geocaching. Oh yeah, I better pack a bag separately for the sleepover! Okay, where is that pair of socks? Which spindles should I bring? And we have to get the dogs ready to go to the kennel. I fell asleep before finishing on Thursday night and never did find that batt (sigh).

Thanks to the late start Friday morning as I scrambled to find those last few things, we only found one geocache (aka cache) on the way there.

But when we arrived I was nervous and excited to meet Abby, and of course Beth and Faina (of lace fame). Little did I know at the time Sharon of Heere Be Dragone fame was also present. But a moment later my eyes espied…

…the wall of fleece. Other than at a fiber festival I have never seen so many different breed fleeces in one place. But I dragged my eyes back to Abby as she was starting her workshop.

I quickly became engrossed in her stories of life in Chinchero as she began her presentation. Weaving and spinning intertwined in the stories and then into the techniques.

True Andean spinning and plying was discussed. How her dad Ed learned the technique that is commonly called “Andean plying” and its publication in Spin-Off. Stupid spindle tricks explained.

We all received spindles and roving to play with. Some took to it with no problem, others added weight until spinning on it was easier. That was the first time in many years I had spun on a bottom whorl spindle without a hook. I did have problems at first, but just out of pure stubbornness that I was going to get the thing to work without adding weight and yes I was eventually successful. Jerry enjoyed the time and and chance to take photos for me. Especially after the workshop of Beth’s shop.

This is just a bit of teaser of what you will find in her shop.

So after the workshop we all milled around a bit. Wine and rootbeer was broken out and Jerry saw his chance to escape before things got too much for him. I shared part of my book collection with Abby, the good, the bad, the unusual. And some of the socks I brought as examples for her to use. I also exposed my problems with knitting gauge for all eyes to see.

Sleep was inevitable and about 2:00 we all started settling down to sleep.

The next morning came way too early for use night owls. Beth went and got coffee and cinnamon rolls for all of us and the sane daytrippers started appearing. I managed to foist off some of my junk on Jerry before he went geocaching, but I still had a substantial amount of junk.

I thought I had warned Beth I didn’t travel light…um…that was an oversight on my part. But I used that junk Beth, well not the Alpaca wheel and its supplies…

Jillian and Carla shows up sparking a whole different atmosphere from the day before.

Beth wears a tiara and Shannah holds down the fort during the workshop.

Late in the day it was becoming obvious that we were being exposed to a lot of material.

And were starting to get an inkling about how much we had trashed Beth’s shop.

Too soon it was over. I knew Jerry would be coming to get me eventually so I got a chance to try our Abby’s Victoria wheel.

And turned around and forgot about Beth wanting to try my Lendrum. Eventually my attention was drawn back to the wall of fleece.

Yes I went shopping, some serious research for us here at Sheepwreck. Some of these fleeces you will see here in the future, I promise! Beth has some pictures of me in the supposed aftermath of my shopping spree, but what she doesn’t tell you is that there were some I only got a pound of that are not put back in the cubes yet.

Jerry ended up meeting us at dinner. He was excited from his day he spent geocaching with the DarrylW4 and Firefly03 of Cache-A-Maniacs as well as muddy and tired. The group eventually ended up back at Beth’s and I was just about to leave when Denny calls and we all continue talking. Eventually Beth, who is in dire need of sleep, kicks us all out and I say goodbye both her and Abby.

The next morning I switch gears and we meet an equally bleary eyed Darryl and Firefly to share stories and trade geocoins (ooh shiny!). Eventually we headed back toward Chicagoland caching at rest areas on the way back and keeping an eye to the weather. Jerry realized that at one of the caches that he had hit 700, luckily it wasn’t a micro.

If you get a chance to take a workshop with Abby by all means go! What you learn from her is something I really can’t explain, but having a chance to talk, ask questions and just watch her made a huge difference. Being able to handle and feel yarn, see the twist, feel the draft of the fibers is nothing like reading about it in a book.

Vicuña, Guanaco, and Paco-Vicuña

Photo by Gato andino.

Vicuña, the very word evokes images of exotic luxury. Fleet footed, endangered, poached for their cinnamon colored fiber the vicuña has been a symbol of the spirit of the Andes. Perseverance in the face of adversity. Since the vicuña is no longer endangered in all parts of its current range, roundups called chacus are held to shear the vicuñas. This serves as a source of income for local community development as well as to discourage poaching of these animals. This diminutive animal only stands about 3 foot at the shoulder and is dual coated with a coarser outer coat and superfine undercoat.

Now that vicuña is now considered threatened in some locations rather than endangered the Convention On International Trade In Endangered Species Of Wild Fauna And Flora (CITES ) allows the sale of vicuña fiber and items made with vicuña from specific localities. Each item sold should include a CITES certificate stating origin. The fiber is very fine 6-10 microns. In comparison qiviut is 11-13 microns and angora rabbit is 13 microns.

All of the above micron counts come from the British Wool Board.

Photo by static-photo.

Guanaco is to the llama what vicuña is to the alpaca. Unlike its cousin, the guanaco is an threatened rather than an endangered species, and even locally abundant in Tierra Del Fuego. But because its numbers are not as low, guanacos are not protected like the vicuña is.

Photo by crookrw.

Yeah, they can be a pest to ranchers. Fences are no barrier to them and the ranchers view them as carrying disease and compete with the sheep and cattle for precious resources.

Like the vicuña, guanacos are double coated. The dehaired undercoat ranges from 14-18 microns and has a length of 1.5″ to 2″. There are some domestic herds of guanacos and much of the fiber available to handspinners are from them. Obviously these farms have very tall fences. The guanaco is smaller than its domesticated brother, the llama, standing at about 4 feet tall a the shoulder. It also does not have the special history of use in Peru that the vicuña has. In fact, Andezoo, who makes stuffed toys of all four South American camelids, portrays Ayak Guanaco as grumpy, tough as nails character.

Photo by mimsical.

Paco-vicuñas are alpacas with vicuña-like traits. Some breeders in the United States have taken vicuñas and bred them to alpaca or vicuña-like alpacas. Farms are breeding for the coat traits of the vicuña while (hopefully) keeping the advantageous traits of the alpaca. Since the alpaca is believed to be a domesticated vicuña subspecies, there should not be any changes as was seen in tame silver foxes that ruined the coats for use by furriers. It is possible to concentrate the vicuña characteristics by careful line breeding.

A handful of farms in the United states are breeding these animals. Some farms admit that some of these animals are crossbreeds, others are more evasive about the origin of their animals. Fiber for handspinning is available through many of these.

In November of 2007 there was a statement issued by all the Andean countries with populations of vicuñas condemning the creation of of paco-vicuñas and that paco-vicuñas should be treated like vicuñas, not domesticated alpacas (Hoffman, Eric “The Comeback Camelid.” Wild Fibers.vol 5, issue 1, pgs 46-56). Because of this it will be interesting to see what happens to the development of herds in the USA. I did notice that Northwest Alpacas no longer has a link to their “Vicuña Collection”. I did still find a dead link to it from this page.

Next we will look at samples of each…which gives me an excuse to go to The Fold.

Finnish Landrace-Versatility is the Name of the Game

Hey, I found the other mitten!

Other than the fact I keep snagging them with my keys, they have stood up the test of time. These are knitted from a Finn/Lincoln in a modified Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern.

Now to the fiber.

Here is a lock of the purebred Finnish Landrace. See the well defined crimp. It was listed by the seller as an uncoated fleece, but not as a lambs fleece so I don’t know if the tip is just from being exposed or not.

This is the combed fiber. I used two row Viking style combs to comb this.

And here is the fiber spun up.

This is the carded fiber. I should have picked this more to get rid of more of the vegetable matter (vm). Not that you can see it, but I sure can.

Here is the spun yarn.

In addition, I managed to find some commercially processed Finn. The fiber in this prep has very little crimp compared to the hand processed fiber.

It was very easy to over spin the fiber when spun directly from the roving.

Overall, I preferred the hand processed fiber, but the commercial roving was no slouch. There is not a huge difference in the yarn between the combed and carded finn. Either way you are going to be pleased. I would not recommend this for baby clothes, nor would I recommend this for rugs. If you have sensitive skin you may not want a pair of finn socks, but a color patterned or cabled sweater would benefit from finns properties.

I’m very pleased overall. I’ve shied awy from finn in the past but I don’t think I will in the future.

It’s spring shearing season and I’m trying hard not to go nuts buying fleeces. Its very hard believe me. But I’ve managed to acquire a couple fleeces of one of my favorite breeds plus I’m working on more of the primitive and down breeds so there is plenty of wool to review in the future.

I just need more time in the day!

When I started spinning…

Oh my, Abby, you do know how to hit the nail on the head about the early days of spinning.  Thus was the world that was right before I learned to spin.  By the time 1985 rolled around.  SpinOff had expanded from an annual to quarterly, Knitters magazine had published it’s second issue, and I had learned to knit. 

In that fateful second issue was an article called “The Handspinners Choice” by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts.  Now I had read Foxfire 2 in high school so I was familiar that spinning was done in the rural south in the recent past but I had no idea that others still make their own yarn because they chose to, not for survival or at places like Conner Prairie Farm where they reenact the past.

 Being a poor undergraduate and happily living on campus of a large university I pursued the resources available making numerous phone calls until I got the information about a local spinners guild and paid for a lesson that included hand cards, crappy unwashed wool, and THE SPINDLE.

It weighs somewhere between 3 and 4 oz and I spun that awful wool and then corriedale on that spindle.  The university had Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot in their collection, Spin Span Spun, and Allen Fannin’s book as well as a few others about weaving with short sections about spinning.  My first spinning book I actually owned was the slender Fleece In My Hands.  I really honestly believed I could make my own yarn cheaper than buying it at the yarn shop….um…yeah…right….. 

A couple years later I received my 19″ Reeves Saxony wheel when I graduated with my bachelors.  I put down the spindle and didn’t look back…for a long time.  But of course in 1987 that was expected.  The spindle was to find out if you liked it or not and then you graduated to a wheel.  End of story.

 But it wasn’t.

Fast forward to the mid 90’s, somehow I got a top whorl spindle spindle.  I have a suspicion Susan had something to with it as during that time I had moved back to the Midwest and I was like a kid in a candy store in her shop.  What really meshed things with me and the top whorl spindle was me going back to graduate school.  Yes, I know what does -that- have to do with spinning.  Well, the quickest way for me to drive from my house to graduate school went right by The Fold.  Being in school and  having a career in which I earned $8K a year, I didn’t exactly spend a lot of money there then, but I’ve made up for it since!  At that time she was a dealer for Hatchtown Farm Spindles and having been raised by a carpenter I knew good wood when I saw it.  Soon I was the owner of several finely turned spindles and I was spinning my way through graduate school.  I found I could actually enjoy spinning on the top whorl.  It felt more stable and in control.

On a whim I taught Jer to spin.  Well, I didn’t really teach him, I gave him about 30 seconds of instruction and walked away.  Ahem, not only is he a better spindle spinner than I, but he also has a spindle named after him.

 Now I am coming full circle back to learning to spin again on low whorl spindles.  My Turkish spindle in all of its fine wood sits languishing.  I have a couple bolivian pushka.

This one is in my bag right now.  The whorl is crooked and I need to fix that so it spins better.  Plus I have a low whorl in the file drawer behind me, waiting for me to forget my knitting projects I take to work every day.  THE SPINDLE will be brought out and shown at Abby’s workshop on spindles in Michigan.  And perhaps I’ll even ply with it.  But I think I’ll replace the acrylic leader.

In the rest of my life.  Danny is burning up the agility ring.  Despite my handling he’s managed to earn two more titles in CPE agility and is more than 1/2 way to his level 4 Standard title.  In fact we are in level 5 now for everything but Snooker and Standard.

It’s hard to believe he will be 9 in May. 

 Roo is also having a good time, we are doing some agility, but he is more confident in obedience and rally.  He still needs one more leg for his APDT RL3 title.  Luke is now on the hunt for his ONYX title in flyball.  I’m still hoping he earns it before I have to retire him.  He is still running 5.2-5.4 seconds which is great for a 9 year old sheltie.  Daisy is slowly working on her rally titles, she had a setback late last year, but seems to be recovering from that nicely.  And Adam?  Well, we will see.  He’s been a visitor at Danny’s agility class and I think he will go with me to Danny’s next agility trial.    I have many hopes for Adam but its all on his time when he is ready.

Hopefully I can get everything together and tell you about the finn I’ve been spinning next time.  But until then I have yarn to spin, geocaches to find, and dogs to train.

Finnish Landrace: Adaptable and Prolific

weecroft

Originally uploaded by apv2007

My introduction to Finnish Landrace or Finnsheep was by Ron Parker through his herd of crossbred Finn/Lincolns many many years ago when Fibernet was a BBS. I still have yarn and a single lonely mitten from that fleece.   Alas, that herd was dispersed long ago and Ron now lives in Sweden.

Brought into the US in 1966 mainly for one characteristic, the ewes ability to produce and support multiple lambs, Finnsheep has become a popular breed to cross other breeds with. It is one of the progenitor breeds of the Polypay. Originating in the cold northern reaches of Finland, it can live off of rough forage and under both cold and hot conditions.

Finnsheep are related to Romanov, Shetland, and other Nordic short tailed breeds. It has a light carcass, which is not well liked by those producing market lambs. So the reason you see it being used to crossbreed with other breeds is to improve carcass while also improving lamb production.

When you examine the fleece you find a medium wool that has many characteristics of other luster wools. Most Finnsheep are single coated with the odd double coated individual. It has an organized open lock with a gentle wave. While white is the most common color found, some breeders have flocks producing naturally colored wool in black, fawn, grey, and brown as well as several patterns.

The American Finnsheep Breeders Association has a wonderful site focused on handspinning fleeces.

I still wonder where I lost that other mitten…..

What To Do With Polypay

Polypay is a breed I hadn’t spun before.  So all of this was new to me.

 

Following washing I took a good hard look at the fleece.  For a non coated fleece from the Midwest this was pretty clean.  The structure of the lock is rather disorganized and the hand is what I call “crisp”.  To me crisp means it is very springy and bounces back well.   This I attribute to the strong influence of the Dorset on this breed.  The tips are not as yellow as this photo shows, sigh, the blue background was probably not the best choice to photograph this wool on.  The staple length of this particular fleece was about 3″.

Carding this fiber was a joy, in fact I went a bit overboard and carded more than my sample needed.  If I was going to do more than sample, I would first flick the tips then card it.  Carding is for organizing the fiber not to clean it!  Flicking helps open the locks for further teasing which will help some of the vegetable matter (vm) to fall out.

 

This is how the carded fiber spun up.   Blessedly the photo doesn’t show the trapped vm.  I spun this up on a drop spindle using a modified long draw.  It behaved itself well.

Combing this fiber, on the other hand, did clean out the short bits and some of the debris.  But once again, this is not the same as flicking and teasing.  Though with combing you probably don’t need to the tease the fiber.

But it sure looks pretty sitting there in those little bundles.

 

Spinning it was a different story.  It was more difficult.  With the short staple length you had to be careful while drafting.  While it created a smoother yarn, you lost some of the bounce that this fiber has.

 

The top sample is the combed fiber, and the bottom is the carded fiber.  Both samples were somewhat over-spun, but not extremely.  After handling these I’ve decided to flick the ends then drum card the rest of this fiber.  I imagine this becoming a three ply sock yarn.  Did I hear you gasp?  Yes, sock yarn.  Merino is not a good sock yarn for long term wear.  This stuff should remain springy, resist felting and wear for a good long time.

Meet Olga

For Christmas 2002 I received a wonderful present.

A 150 cm 10 harness Ulla Cyrus Vertical Countermarche Loomaka Olga the Oxaback. Imported with the help and generous hand holding by my friend Sara of The Woolgatherers.

I decided on a countermarche loom after realizing that treadling my 4 harness Herald jack loom irritated my left knee which was damaged as a result of agility training. What attracted me to this one rather than a Toika or Glimakra was the unique way that the treadles are attached to the lams.

Picking up the loom in late February of 2003 proved to be a challenge as Sara was not a dealer for them like she is now. Jer and I ended up picking up the loom from O’Hare and going through customs ourselves. Lesson learned, hire someone to do the customs paperwork for you. Surprisingly, I only had to pay duty on a few shuttles. I could import the huge loom duty free. Also the box the main parts are shipped in is a HEAVY wooden crate. Jer and I barely managed to get it in the house.

The above photo shows the first project in process after the loom was put together. A simple log cabin pattern in 8/2 cotton with 4 harnesses hung.

Now its been over a year since Olga has had a warp on her. The warp has been ready for a while, but something always kept me from warping it.

Yeah, probably missing Patches.

Something about this loom is very connected to her. She was my original “loom dog” even though she wasn’t as handy as Roo. She never retrieved very well preferring to pick things up and throwing them at me. She was comfortable anywhere she could be in my way it seemed, behind the bench, under the treadles. As she got older she would get stuck and I or Jer would have to carefully extract her from some place under the warp or beside the lamms.

Anyhow, I’m finally made some progress I can share with everyone in warping Olga with some romney I purchased a while back.

Yes that’s it, 332 ends to be warped at about 6 ends per inch. First job is to get the lease sticks in the back cross and attached to the loom next to the backbeam.

Then I spread the warp in a raddle. Now I’ve calculated this warp to be 140 cm wide so I need to separate threads into groups in the raddle.

After that I put the apron rod through the loops in the warp. HA! That’s easier said than done. Last time I attempted to lash a slat threaded through the warp ends. Can you say broken slat and loss of a bit of warp.

Now the fun begins. I hang onto the the warp while the husbands cranks the warp onto the back beam. We insert slats as we go so the warp goes on smoothly and evenly with only problems being warp slipping off the slats. And after warping together for the past four years we are still married. I now realize I should have split this warp into four sections rather than two.

Of course we have “extra help”. What would I do without my loom dog? Silly prick eared aussie. The shelties wander in an out, but they don’t like the noise the loom makes.

Once the warp is on the back beam, then I move up front so I can thread the heddles. This is fairly easy as it is straight 2/2 twill. 

After threading the heddles I hang my reed at a comfortable height and thread it. This particular reed is 7.5 ends per inch aka (30 ends per 10 cm) so it should work perfectly with one thread per dent.  If I wasn’t using twill I would not be setting it this close.  This is when a trained dog comes in real handy.  If I drop my reed hook, I just send the dog to go pick it up.  Oh and don’t forget to keep a container of dog cookies nearby to reward the good aussie with!

With everything threaded I place the beater back on the loom and place the reed in it. Then its time to tie to the front apron. And adjust and fiddle, and adjust some more.

Its tedious, yes, but the results make it worth it.

 Now the hard part, getting everything in balance so I have equal pull and all the treadles working as they should.   Treadles are tied up, holders are removed and the pin slowly eased out of place.  Wow…this one is almost right on.  I only need to adjust the height of the beater.

Now I’m good to go. Once this is finished I will be fulling it. As Laura Fry says, nothing is finished until it is wet finished! This is the first wool blanket project on this loom, but not the last. I mean, why else am I spinning up 10 lbs of Shetland wool!   If you look carefully you can see my one threading error that I found and fixed with a string heddle.

On another note of obsession, the color bug has bit, and bit hard. When I say bugs I mean bugs.

Cochineal bugs that is! Here is my cooling dyepot of roving and cochineal and the resulting roving. Obvious the pH was on the alkaline side as it is almost purple. Sorry about the one picture being out of focus, but I thought the color was more important to show you than the amorphous roving in a pot. I also need to learn to NOT felt the roving until after I spin it. The other pictures colors are off, the roving is closer to fuchsia.

Here is some mordanted yarn . It was used on the exhaust of the dye from the bugs. Then after the dyeing. From left to right I used merino, suri alpaca, mohair and naturally colored corriedale.  And this yarn is pale fuchsia as well, not salmon colored.

 Oh there is more where those colors came from. I have some chamomile and weld to play with as well. And a few Earthhues extracts. Most of the stuff I bought were New World dyes. I’m trying to limit myself somewhat, but its hard when you have the whole world to stick in a dyepot. The indigo will wait until spring. It is a vat dye, and one that smells like an old outhouse to be exact. I’ll be doing that outside when the weather is nicer.

The roving is some seconds from Brown Sheep. I’ll be carding them on my drum carder to blend them in different ways, at least the ones that are not felted into a solid rope.

Washing Merino (or Other Fine Wools)

Well, its about time I introduce you to how I wash greasy wool. Originally I planned to do this all with pictures. But since my kitchen is in a perpetual state of clutter I thought it best not to take pictures.

First of all examine your fleece you want to wash. Take it out of its bag, roll out on a sheet and examine it. This is the opportune time to remove large pieces of vegetable matter (vm), second cuts and any stuff that really not worth washing.

I then take 6-8 oz worth of fiber and place it in small drawstring top lingerie bag and close tightly. I then take a large stockpot that is dedicated to washing wool and fill it up about 2/3’s full with the hottest water I can get from our tap. It comes out about 120-140 degrees. I then place it on my stove with the burner on low. Just low enough to keep the water at 140-150 degrees. If the water at your house doesn’t come out of the tap that hot, allow the water to heat up to at least 140 degrees.

I use Dawn dishwashing liquid to wash my wool. With hard water I find that it does the best job. I have tried Orvus paste in the past, but it is better as a wetting agent and not for actually removing grease at least with my water situation. You will need to experiment how much Dawn to use, once again the hardness and pH of your water is going to affect how well how well it works. About 4 seconds worth of squirting is what I use. I then mix it up and check my water temperature.

Once it is hot enough and the detergent is well mixed in the water I drop my bag of wool in. I try and let the wool sink into the water on its own, but will push the last little bit and start my timer for 10 minutes.

After the time has elapsed, I then dump the entire pot into my top loading washer, set it to spin. While the wool spins out I start filling the pot for the second wash. Most every wool I wash needs two washes, some will take more though. Repeat this process for the second wash and then check the wool. Is it still greasy or dirty? Then a third wash will be needed.

Once the wool is clean then you will want to rinse the batch. I simply fill the stockpot with hot water from the tap, push the wool down into it and then spin in the washer. Once again, rinse twice and check. If there is still some soap residue then rinse again. On the final rinse you will want to set your washer for a full spin only cycle. You are only using the washer to remove water from the wool.

After washing all the wool, I then take it to my basement where I have a screen set up for the wool to dry on. Spread it out and allow it to dry. After it is dry you will want to shake it out over the screen to allow more of the vm to fall out.

That’s it! It takes time and those pots get heavy so if you have a bad back it might not be such a good idea to use a large stockpot, but you will need to cut down on the amount of wool you wash at one time if you use a smaller one. Maybe a better idea is to send it out to someone else to process. Personally, I prefer to wash most of my fleeces myself, even if I later send them out to be made into roving. By doing that I run the risk that the processor will re-wash the fleece if I don’t wash it well enough, but that hasn’t happened very often.

I spared myself holiday knitting and weaving. My niece was the only one to get anything handknitted and that’s been done for over 6 months. It was a baby surprise jacket that I had bought and promptly lost 2 sets of buttons for. I decided that the jacket was not meant to have buttons on it and gave it to her before she outgrew it.

I finally ran out of yarn for the main body of the Falling Leaves scarf. I now have started the edging and have finished the first short side and the corner heading up the long side.

The PI shawl with the Shetland/Shetland blend also got some progress done on. I’m up the 96 row stage! That means I will work about 50 rows and then start the edging. I did move it over to a 47″ circular needle out of self preservation. Elizabeth Zimmerman may have been happy to work it on a 29″ needle, but I certainly am not! At least not yarn as thick as I’m working with.

Happy New Year everyone and may it bring you joy and promise. The dogs and I have a lot of work ahead of us this coming year. Agility, obedience, rally and flyball. We have goals, but nothing is set in stone, we will have to see how training progresses.

As you can see, I have my work cut out for myself.

Polypay-An American Breed

Feeding time

Originally uploaded by baalands

Like all breeds of sheep, the Polypay breed was developed to fill a need. In particular the need for a highly prolific breed that could produce and mother multiple lambs in the western ranges of the United States. The name is combination of poly-referring to many or multiple and pay-the return on the investment. It was developed from a combination of Finnsheep, Rambouillet, Dorset, and Targhee. Each providing a specific benefit in the development of the breed. This combination produces a breed that is capable of producing two lamb crops a year and a single wool crop a year.

The Polypay not only is suited to the west, but is coming popular in the Midwest as well. At Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival back in September they had some polypay lambs on display showing off the off-season lambing capabilities. Plus its very nice to have cute little lambs bouncing around at the festival.

The standard calls for the wool to be uniform, not to have coarseness or britchiness and a count from between 54 to 62 (about 22-29 microns, similar to corridale). Because it is such a new breed, there is large amount of variation between fleeces. Most should have a distinct crimp and be between 3-4″ long, but some fleeces can be quite disorganized and have a crisp feel throwing back to the breeds Dorset roots.

This is definitely a breed to watch. In the future there should be more flocks of this sheep showing up at a farm near you.