Jake to Shawl

 I have been spinning bits of Jake.

One of the perks of having such an uncool hobby as spinning is people asking me to come and do spinning demonstrations at vintage fairs and heritage events. So I get paid to sit and spin. Nice. 

As a result I have gotten a fair bit of spinning done. Jake's fleece is spinning up beautifully - I can definitely say it is the best result I have ever gotten from raw fleece. Perhaps the fleeces I have gotten my paws on before have been just poorer quality, or perhaps I am doing a much better job of preparation than I have previously as I just care more about this fleece. Either way I am really pleased with the results. Look how fine that white yarn is!!!! Check out the lack of massive lumps characteristic of my usual spinning!!!!

I originally hoped to make Jake into a jumper, but as his fleece spun so well into such a fine yarn, I think he is going to be a shawl. I whipped up a sample of Annis (from Knitty) last night - and apart from the fact that I HATE knitting nupps, I think it could look nice. (I was experimenting with replacing the nupps with yo, k2tog.)

By blending his dark brown patches with his white fleece I am hoping to get a nice range of greys, though most of the yarn will be white. I never wear white but it seems somehow inconsiderate  to think of dyeing Jake's fleece! Maybe next year!

Sheep shearing

(I'll warn you now it's a picture-heavy post.)

So, we uncovered the sheep one by one and the Amazing K sheared each one. More about that anon. Behold above, the un-coated fleece of dear Jake. As you can see the covered part of his fleece is so much cleaner than the uncovered section (to the left, on his bum.) So we are happy with the coats.

 The Amazing K in action, shearing with the most enormous set of vicious-looking hand-shears ever.

Jake's fleece. 

His wool is soooooo nice and soft, with a staple length of about 5.5" and a beautiful even tight crimp. 

I immediately combed a lock out and spun it up into this lovely 2-ply yarn.

11 wpi for those of you interested and very even and fine, easy to spin. 

I had originally been thinking of making a jumper out of Jake - which I'm not sure I would've had enough usable fleece for after skirting him. But as the wool spun, it was clear something finer, a thinner yarn, would be more suitable. Perhaps a shawl?

Rosebud was the first sheep to be shorn and as a result, there was an awful lot of second cut in her fleece - little annoying bumbles of fleece that have been cut twice and end up forming a little lump in your spun yarn. 

Also her fleece was shorter - due to us being a bit cautious with the shears - staple length of 4" or so. Her fleece is more matted and difficult to comb out so produced a lumpier sample yarn when I spun it up.

 I washed Jake's fleece by placing it in mesh laundry bags and soaking it in hot water with a little detergent. Then I gently rinsed it out after a half an hour or so. I gently squashed the water out of it, and rolled it in a towel to squeeze as much water as I could out. 

Even so, the tips remained dirty. I've been thinking of ways to combat this next year. Firstly, I think we will try putting the coats on earlier - we didn't get them until January so there was a lot of dirt in their fleeces already. Secondly I would consider flick-carding the tips of his fleece either before the coat goes on, or before shearing. Jake is so tame that this would be okay with him. (Not so with the girls....)

I used small combs to prepare the wool for spinning, and also this home-made hackle. (A load of nails stuck through a bit of wood.) I loaded it up with fibre, tips all facing out.

After much trial I decided to just cut the tips off - it was much easier to use the rest of the fleece then, whereas with them on there was way too much combing involved and the fleece still came out dirty in places. If anyone has an interesting advice on dealing with a fleece with dirty tips please pass it on.

I combed it out then and pulled it off the comb and rolled it up ready to spin. Mmmm.... it's like a cloud... all lanolin-smelling and soft and mushy....mmmmm....

After shearing, the sheep were all suspicious of the "new" sheep - they don't recognise each other with  their new haircuts. 

Jake having a snack afterwards.

The girls with their fresh haircuts.

All in all, it was a learning experience. The two tamer sheep weren't too bad, but the two wilder ones were pretty unimpressed with the whole event and hard to manage.

In terms of wool, Jake's wool is by far the best of the herd, the softest and least matted so I think he is where we will focus our efforts on wool protecting in future. 

Now I have bags and bags of fleece to deal with and am wishing for more dry days so I can get it washed!

In other news...

The sheep have finally been en-coated. And yes, we are now officially the laughing stock of Roscommon. It's a good thing we don't have any roadside fields, so the large volume of passing traffic* can't ridicule us as they drive past. 

Here are some before and after shots. (And yes, you spotted it - even more ridiculous, we bring them around on leads and occasionally for walks down the lane.) (And yes, those coats are silver. Thankfully they've got a bit mucky now and don't show up as being silver anymore.

If I'd had more time I was going to decorate the coats with appliqued lightning bolts and other such sheepy type things. Might as well just go for it. It would also be easier to tell them all apart at any rate.)

Ah but sure look at them there in their wee coats. Aren't they just lovely?

We have only had a few minor mishaps since. One of the girls managed to somehow get the rear end of her coat off and was wearing it like an apron, tripping over the front of it until we sorted her out. And then we found the probable cause as Jake headbutted Tinkerbell** in the arse and managed to get his horns caught in the strap of her coat, thus entangling the two of the them together. There was a lot of amusing jumping about until they managed to unhook themselves a minute or two later. 

Anyway, there have been no incidents since then and judging by the amount of crap they have managed to get mashed into the wool around their necks since then, the coats will hopefully be doing a great job of protecting all that lovely wool. Ummm...roll on June and shearing time!

For anyone interested, they are Matilda brand sheep coats, and I got them from these guys in Australia.

* alright then, the three cars that pass daily. 
** Yes her name is Tinkerbell. But you can't blame that one on us.

From sheep to yarn

I have been meaning to write this post for the last year or so and though this project is not quite finished (the yarn has not yet been knit with) with all this sheepy action in Wovember, it seemed an apt time to finally write it.

As a learning spinner I have mostly used commercially carded or combed top - I know some spinners feel this is not really spinning - but alas I am made of lazier stuff than they - the spinning itself is what I enjoy, the carding or combing much less so.

This project was my first adventure dealing with whole raw fleeces, straight from the sheep's back and into my hands.

The fleeces I got from my neighbour, finely grown by her lovely shetland sheep, (pictured above and below at lambing this year.) It was my first real chance to deal with a whole fleece and gave me a lot of respect for the process. The work involved was enormous. Below is the very sheep whose grey/white fleece I was given, pictured here with this year's lamb - I'm afraid I can't spell her Hungarian name...

Below is her fleece from last year. As you can see, its pretty dirty and required a lot of picking through. Much of it was matted also. (I wonder how you stop this happening - coats perhaps?) Some of the black fleeces were so matted they were almost felted into little rugs, and unusable for spinning.

Much picking through ensued, sorting out the usable fibre, then washing it with many many rinses and leaving it to dry. After that I had a selection of lovely locks. The fleece pictured above gave a small amount of white fleece, and a larger amount of grey - you can see the range below in the washed locks.

After that there were hours of combing the fleece - this may have been easier with a better fleece, but it was slow work, teasing out the locks. I combed it with two small hand-combs, making about 3 passes between each comb, then pulling off a roll of top from them.

Then it was spun into yarn - some of it fairly lumpy - the black in particular as it was a more matted fleece to begin with and I only have a certain amount of patience with combing...

I have yet to decide what to knit from it. I felt some stranded colourwork a la Shetland would be most fitting, but as I am not massively fond of colourwork I am waiting for the right pattern.

I used some of it for a felted artwork, of which more anon...

The whole process was definitely a labour of love. The huge majority of the time in processing the fleece was spent preparing it for spinning, and the littlest time to actually spin it. It gave me a whole new level of respect for the process, and made me realise that the preparation is where it's at.

I remember reading in Lilias Mitchell's Irish Spinning, Weaving and Dyeing about families in Ireland producing their own wool - the older people spun and the younger ones all carded. The spinners would be annoyed if the wool wasn't carded well by the younger and less experienced members of the family - I can really see why now. You cannot make up for insufficient carding or combing while spinning.

I cannot imagine preparing enough wool to spin your own yarn to make clothes for a whole family, and thankfully I don't have to, but it was really worth doing, if only to see the sheer (no pun intended!) work involved in something I thought of as relatively straightforward.

I continue to use a mixture of prepared tops and raw fleeces to spin with, but have to admit I love the spinning and not the preparation so will be known as one of those lazy spinners who gets a helping hand from mechanical carding and combing machines. Hooray for machines!