Babydoll Southdown Wool

I really like babydoll Southdown wool for one big reason, it can be machine washed and dried without shrinking or felting. I have a pair of socks I made out of some babydoll Southdown that I dyed with Japanese indigo last summer. I've thrown them in with regular wash loads several times and dried them as well and they still fit and are still comfy and warm.

I purchased a raw babydoll Southdown fleece at the recent Great Lakes Fiber Show. It was a really nice mix of light shades of gray. Here's s portion of it getting ready for a wash:

 

 

You can see the shades of gray and the sun-bleached tips. I really liked the grays for themselves, but I thought that they would add a really nice depth to any color I might dye it, too:

 

 

 

I took about an ounce of the washed fiber and carded it up into a batt. Carding is the way to go with babydoll fiber because it has such a short fiber length - it wouldn't really work well on the combs.

 

I then divided the batt up into four sections and dyed each section a different color:

 

 

Then I mixed the colors on the drum carder:

 

Here's the mixed batt, I only ran it through the drum carder once. The colors would blend more fully with each successive run through the carder, but I wanted them more distinct:

 

 

And here's a ball of the carded roving ready to spin:

 

 

I went ahead and spun the whole one-ounce batt into a singles, then pulled off a bit and let it ply back on itself into a short length of two-ply and knitted up a quick swatch:

 

I think it'll make some nice, colorful socks. I'm planning on carding and dyeing and spinning another three ounces in the same colors for a nice, 2-ply skein of sock yarn for wool socks that don't have to be hand washed and lain out to dry!

Icelandic fleece, or, entering the world of tog and thel

I recently received an order of two raw Icelandic fleeces. One is white/oatmeal in color and the other is a brown/red.

Icelandic sheep are a bit unique in that they produce two types of wool in one fleece. Usually if a sheep produces both long and short fibers, the longer ones will be kemp or guard hair, which is structurally different from wool. The Icelandic breed of sheep produces both long and short fibers, but they are both wool.

The longer fibers are called tog, and the shorter fibers are called thel.The two fibers can be separtated fairly easily by pulling the longer fibers out while keeping hold of the shorter ones. Traditionally the children were set to this task.

The long tog fibers make an excellent warp yarn when spun, and the short, cushy, warm thel fibers make wonderful yarn for sweaters and the like. 

Viking combs were designed for this fiber, and I wish I had some, but I have four-pitch wool combs, which won't work well with this fiber. Anyway, I washed a bit of both of my fleeces and this morning I set about separating the tog from the thel of the red/brown fleece.

The picture below shows the piece of fleece at the top, and some which has been separated below it. The short, warm thel is on the bottom left, and the longer tog is on the bottom right (click on any of the pictures to see them closer):

Again, a piece of whole fleece:

And the same piece separated into thel (left), and tog (right):

I have a couple of dog combs which I used to in place of Viking combs to comb out both types of the wool, separately. I then carded the short thel wool with hand cards and made two rolags, and I pulled the tog off of the combs into a short piece of roving. They are picutred below, the two rolags of short, cushy thel are on the top, and the tog roving is on the bottom. You can easily see the difference between the two types of wool produced from this one fleece. Both are soft to the touch:

I have a lot more to process, this was just a little test of how to go about handling Icelandic wool, it's my first time. You can also skip separating the fibers and card everything together and spin it. I'll try doing it that way, too. Apparently the longer tog stays toward the center of the yarn and the softer thel migrages to the outside. I can't wait to spin it separated and all carded together.

Transformations

It's so gratifying to be able to turn this:


Into this:

I've spun the first yarn from my Christmas fleece. 150 yards of luscious, soft, squishy, springy, stretchy two-ply. This is really nice wool.

The process involves washing the raw wool (VERY gently, so as not to felt it); combing the washed locks with wool combs into what's called top, or roving; and then spinning two bobbinfuls of singles yarn, which are then plied together into a two-ply yarn.

And I've literally only scratched the surface of that bag of wool. I have 99% of the fleece still to process. I'm so excited!

Big Bag of Raw Fleece

I got a HUGE bag of raw sheep's fleece for Christmas!:


I'm so excited! I've already begun washing it a little at a time. Can't wait to comb it and dye it and spin it...

And I still have alpaca yet to process. I'll be busy for awhile!

Stalking the wild asparagus - plus processing my alpaca fleece

Many years ago a friend recommended I read Stalking the Wild Asparagus, by Euell Gibbons. I actually never got around to it, but ever since, I've somehow been enthralled by the idea of finding wild asparagus.

Decades later, I've done it. By accident. While 'stalking' another wild plant, I came across a patch of wild asparagus! Wow. I feel as though I have accomplished one of my life's secret goals (another of which is to climb Mt. Everest - but that, I'm sure, will never come to fruition, so a thing like this is made all the more meaningful :-)

Here is the wild asparagus:

I can't tell you what a thrill came over me when I practically ran into it. I'll wait with great anticipation until next spring when I'll return to this remote spot and gather a few of the early shoots for a yummy treat. It will tide me over unil my own asparagus, planted this past spring, begins to produce.

And now for the alpaca. I got my hands on a raw alpaca fleece:

Here it is after two or three days of sorting:

And here are some of the bags of sorted fiber:

I've been washing it a few ounces at a time in some salad spinners. I let it soak a couple of times in hot, soapy water. Let it sit through a couple of rinse baths, and then spin the excess water out of it:

I let it dry on a screen in my garage. Here is some scoured fleece:

And here it is in the 'planking' stage of the combing process with my four-pitch wool combs:

Here it is after it's been pulled off of the combs through a diz. This is combed top, ready to spin:

The stuff that's left on the combs after I pull off the sliver is put away to be carded later. Why is it in baggies? I don't know. Just thought it was neater that way:

I've spun about 150 yards of double-ply yarn already. I'm anxious to see how much yarn I'll get out of one fleece, and how much out of each quality of sorted fiber.

It's a long process, but I don't mind it.