Sheep fleece

Sheep wool - it's a fun and useful material, but there's a lot of work that goes into turning it from a warm covering for a sheep into a finished project. First, it must be sheared off the sheep as a single piece, or two, as was the case with the fleece I worked on today. This once was skirted, meaning there was no wool or hairs from the belly, legs, or head. Secondly the wool is washed. If the fleece is extremely dirty, it needs to soak for at least a day before it can be washed.

Only small bits (a few large handfuls) are washed at a time. Any detergent can be used, so long as it's not much, and the water used to wash and rinse must be at the same temperature. (Meaning, any pre-washed wool has to be washed and rinsed in cool water.) If it's not, it'll felt, and I'm looking for wool that can be spun.

Just washing is fun, although wet wool really does stink! Although the wool was not exceptionally dirty, it was on the brown side, and right before my eyes it turned into a beautiful white.

Before anything can be done with the wool, it has to dry, which can take a day or more. This step is easy, though, as the wool is simply spread out and I occasionally fluff it up as it dries.

Then the wool is carded. This fluffs the wool up and spreads out the fibers, making it possible to spin the wool, and is done using wool cards. A wool card is simply a flat brush with a handle that is covered with short curved hooks. One or two cards may be used for this part of the process. It goes faster with two cards, but I'm only going to be using one for now. Larger cards also speed up the process, but they begin to get harder to work with when the card size increases. :(. For now, I'm just going to be using small ones.

A single card is used by taking a small clump of washed wool and brushing downwards with the card. (See? Easy!) Two cards are used by spreading a clump of wool across one, holding the second card with the hooks facing each other and the handles on opposite sides. I would (very!) gently pull the wool from one card to the other, working from the top of the cards. To remove the wool, I would turn the empty card over to match the handles and brush down - voila, a large handful of wool carded to a soft, fluffy pile.

Wow! Long post. But I'm thoroughly excited about my new project, so I think it deserves a long one.

Word Count since last post:
Dragon's Children: 969
Nightmare: 262