Spinning!

Outdoor spinning is lovely on a warm day!

This week my blog is all about spinning – and I don’t mean that fast-pedalling-on-an-exercise-bike thing! Last week was a quiet one as far as gardening work went, and the weather was not the best,  so I decided to concentrate on a mainly indoor pursuit instead.

A little while ago a friend of mine asked me if I would spin-test (like road-testing!) a couple of her Shetland fleeces. She consistently wins prizes for her fleeces at shows, both on and off the sheep, but had no idea how they would be for hand-spinners. I did point out to her that I am not an expert, but she still wanted me to have a go – such a trusting soul! Most of her sheep are the colouration called grey katmoget (there are many different colours of Shetland sheep, each with traditional names), which is silver-grey on the upper body and black beneath.

A grey katmoget Shetland sheep

The two fleeces were duly delivered in labelled paper carriers, and I decide to spin one ‘in the grease’ i.e. without washing the lanolin out of it first, and the other after washing. They were both from ‘shearlings’ i.e. it was the first time that their fleeces had been clipped, and these are always the best as they are longer, thicker and more lustrous than at subsequent shearings. As a sheep ages the fleece tends to become thinner and, if they have had any health issues during the year, there is often a weak bit in the fleece which is not good for spinning.

The raw fleece ready for carding

The one to be washed was split into more manageable bits because, although Shetland fleeces are relatively small, a soaking wet fleece is a difficult item to manhandle, and I don’t really have a big enough vessel to give it enough room to really soak. I placed about four gallons of rainwater in the container, with a squirt of eco-friendly washing up liquid, and left it to soak for several days. The washing up liquid helps remove the lanolin, as it has a degreaseant in it, and also helps to ‘wet’ the wool effectively.

Soaking the fleece

Once it has soaked for several days, I carefully squeeze out as much water as possible and then rinse it several times in lukewarm water, being very careful not to agitate it, as Shetland wool felts for a pastime! With other fleeces I have got away with putting the rinsed fleece into a net laundry bag and spinning it in the washing machine, but I tried this with a previous Shetland fleece and ended up with a nice piece of grey felt! ☹ After the final rinse I took it outside and draped it as thinly as I could over my wooden garden bench, so that it would dry in the sun – it promptly rained on it! However, the first piece eventually dried and is waiting to be spun. The second piece is still soaking and will be processed as soon as I have some free time.

Washed fleece drying in the sun

The first job with the fleece, after washing or not, is to card it. This involves combing the fleece so that most of the fibres lie in one direction and is traditionally done using a pair of carders which are rectangular pieces of wood on short handles, covered on one face with carding cloth which has multiple rows of curved wire teeth. The two carders are used in opposition to each other and the fleece to be carded is laid on one face and the other face pulled through it, several times. This method is very time-consuming and for someone with arthritic thumb joints, ultimately painful, so I decided a few years ago to invest in a drum carder, which does the same job, but on a larger scale with two opposing drums covered in carding cloth doing the pulling. Allegedly you can get electric ones, but I bought a manual one which still saves me a lot of time, and pain.

My drum carder

Once the carding is done you end up with a batt of wool with all the fibres tending to lie in one direction, and about the size of a piece of A4 paper (or foolscap, if you’re old enough to remember that!). And now the fun really starts!

The prepared Batt of wool

To create a yarn that is strong enough to knit or crochet with, it is advisable to spin two full bobbins of wool that are then plied together onto a third bobbin. The unwashed fleece is full of lanolin and a few bits of vegetation that have got caught in the fleece as it grows, and a fair amount of dust and dirt, so I wore an apron to protect my clothes. In some ways it is easier to spin a greasy fleece as the fibres stick together more easily and also feed through the fingers smoothly. However, the downside is that your hands and arms get very greasy and sticky. Some people, including the owner of these sheep, are allergic to lanolin, so any yarn would have to be well washed after spinning to remove it completely. Once I’d spun my two bobbins of ‘singles’ I suddenly remembered that my aunty had given me some cones of a filament, that may or may not be silk, when she was having a sort out of her wool stash, but it is ultra-fine and shiny and I decided to add some of the silver grey into the finished yarn, whilst I was plying the other two strands. 

Plying the two 'singles'

Once plied I wound the yarn into two skeins using a useful tool called a ‘niddy-noddy’ and then washed them in lukewarm water and detergent, rinsed them several times until the water ran clear and then hung them on the line to drip dry. When you first wash either the fleece or the finished yarn, the washing water comes out a dark orangey brown, that gets progressively paler as you rinse. Some of that is accumulated dirt and dust but most of it is the lanolin. When I use the outside container to soak the fleece, I subsequently use the lanolin water to water my pot plants – they seem to thrive on it!

Hand carders and a 'Niddy-Noddy' behind

I’m hoping that the washed fleece is as easy to spin as the unwashed one but, so far, both fleeces get the thumbs-up from me. It is not the smoothest of yarns, as Shetland wool seems to have lots of little lumps and knurly bits that give the finished yarn texture, but I will be quite happy to knit with it and turn it into something beautiful.

   

The finished skeins