Fleece with character (its not just about looks)

Cute Valais sheep at https://valaisblacknose.co.nz/

Someone mentioned Valais (aka Swiss Mountain Sheep) a while ago and said they had been surprised by this fleece. I remember that feeling myself.

If there was a competition for the sheep that most people would want to take home with them then this would be a top contender. Its a real cutie. But its fleece is definitely not next-to-skin soft and you can tell that by looking at the micron count for the breed. Every breed has characteristics on which they are judged and the character of the fleece gives the spinner lots of clues about how to process it and what it is best suited for.

Non-spinners and those not familiar with sheep may not realise just how varied (characterful) different fleeces can be. The Wool Marketing Board publishes a great book informing about the characteristics of the different sheep breeds (download (PDF))

The things that the spinner will look for in choosing a breed of sheep are:

• micron count (measure of fibre diameter) - tells you about the coarseness/fineness of a fleece, which affects how well it will wear and where it can be used (for example the Valais produces 'coarse carpet grade wool with fibres having an average micron of 38 in mature sheep and lambs 28 – 30' Source: https://valaisblacknose.co.nz/).  Less than 24 microns should be comfortably wearable next to skin with ultrafine merino scoring 14.6-16.5 microns. (Source: https://www.woolmark.com). Baby alpaca can score as low as 10 microns, but human hair is around 100 microns - hence a hair shirt being a punishment.
  
  However each fleece can be different from the norm and one way to test the prickle factor of a specific fibre is to spend a day wearing a lock of this close to your skin (e.g. tucked into your bra if you are wearing one). If you don't notice it's there its good for making things which lie against sensitive skin
  
  
• length of staple/ lock (group of fibres) - A lustre breed sheep has locks more than 5" long and a downland breed with short staple might be only 2" long. Very long or very short staples cannot be well prepared for spinning using the same types of tools. So wool combs (which have rows of long metal teeth) can tame long locks which carders can tackle short fibres in more of a brushing action. If you think of your own hair, a brush with short teeth would have little impact on long, possibly tangled, hair.
  
  The length of staples can be affected by when the sheep was shorn and how often in a year it was shorn/trimmed. A show sheep or a long staple sheep may be sheared or trimmed more often than others. A young sheep which has never been shorn before (called a shearling) will have had longer than one year to grow its fleece. This means that the ends of the locks (the tips) are pointed and soft, having never been cut, it also means that it may be longer than adult fleece locks, more than one season's growth.
  
  
• the amount of crimp, the presence of vegatitive matter and the condition of the animal all matter. But this post has strayed a long way from the simple message that not all lovely looking sheep will have lovely feeling fleece. Getting your hands on the fleece and testing it is very part of the assessment - ideally you want to see the full fleece intact as different parts of the fleece have different qualities.
  

Wet fleece: Dry fleece

Clockwise from top left: Fine, Silky, Hairy, Loose crimp

I have been musing that washing and prepping fleece to spin is rather control-freaky. Like the artist who grinds her own pigments?

It means that I can choose exactly what type of breed I want and - assuming I can lay hands or eyes on it in person before buying - it also means I can choose a fleece that is a really good representative of that breed. Or even one which is an unbelieveable representative of that breed. And let's not forget the one-off cross breeds. How about a rare breed? (talk about sheep with character!). Or fleece from flocks with insufficient capacity to attract a mill. Or fleece from rescue sheep, or no-slaughter flocks.  Or in my case the very very very local sheep I have direct access to during a pandemic.

Once you have the fleece, then - even more control-freakery - you can start selecting which parts of the fleece have the properties you want for your project. Colour, coarseness, length and strength. You can get very very picky. This picture shows (before washing) four different qualities from the same sheep. If you don't process your own wool all of these different fleece attributes get mixed together (all whites and all darks perhaps or coarse with fine) and likely not just one sheep. It all becomes more homogenised.

Drying fleece just right

Using IKEA FANGST storage (from Car boot sales/charity shops)

Wool holds a lot of water so - before I learned about spin dyers in fleece washing - I used my polytunnel as a large weatherproof space to dry my fleece in. It dried the fleece and unfortunately over-dried it.

Nowadays I use hanging net toy baskets on the washing line, shaded from the heat of the sun, gently drying. A colourful sight and, this year, within eyeballing distance of some of the sheep that provided it.

Now that's local.

First wash your fleece ...

Rosemary's fleece, skirted and ready for its beauty treatment

IF the weather is summer-y (big if) there is lovely synergy between helping your garden plants to additional food and watering while prepping the new year's fleeces for spinning. Mucky wool can be added to containers, hanging baskets and compost bins as the fleece will break down and add goodness while also (bonus) helping the soil to retain moisture. The 'liquid manure' generated during soaking and washing gets added just when plants need it most. Definitely don't put it down the drain if you have a soakaway system - it will gum up the works!

But do you NEED to wash fleece?
No you don't. Most spinners do not want to wash fleece - its not the most pleasant process. You can skip it altogether if you spin wool 'in the grease' (i.e. as it is shorn with just the worst bits of field and poo removed). I don't like the way that the fleece feels in this state and how it deposits sticky dirt on me and my equipment so not an option I would choose.

You can also do a no-wash 'clean' if you set up a fermented suint vat using the natural soapification process inherent in fleece. Over a few days the chemicals in the fleece dissolve the worst of the dirt (if all goes to plan). There are some similarities with sourdough making - you need to prime the vat as you would a sourdough starter, but ingredients this time are a very greasy fleece, soft water and warmth. The vat itself smells rank if working properly and does leave some residual stickiness in the fleece after cleaning (more than I like). My dormant vat is sealed and in the polytunnel - I won't be using it for fleece this year but will water it down to be plant feed for the tomatoes.

A way of washing fleece that works for me
Through trial and error I've developed an approach resulting in a nice feeling fleece and a process which wastes minimal water. (That is, it uses lots of water but all of this is recycled onto my plants). The equipment is adaptable (you may have less fleece than me or different containers) but a spin dryer is key equipment in avoiding felting and speeding up the process.

I will add a fuller description to the Tools and Technique page - but this visual probably captures the effects quite well.

Stage 1: Cold overnight soak in a 'bath' in the garden. Even though this was a relatively clean fleece the water is pretty mucky as you can see. This stage helps remove surface grime.
Stage 2: Spinning all the water out has the effect of bringing the fleece to room temperature and shows that the fleece at this stage is holding cleaner water than was in the bath it came out of.
Stage 3: After sitting in very hot soapy water the scales in the wool fibres open and more dirt drops out. The heat also helps remove grease (especially important if dyeing). Remove and spin again while water is still hand hot (so scales don't close up again and trap the dirt). The discharge water from spinning has soap in it but is less grimy than at stage 2.
Stage 4: After rinsing carefully in warm water another spin and by now the discharge is pretty clear.

The wool will be washed after spinning and soaked during dyeing so I would be happy to dry it off at this stage ready to prep it.

It started with a sheep ...

Rosemary and Rosemary's baby after 2020 shearing

Well it actually started with a property in Warwickshire that we fell in love with. Affordable because of its undesirable location between the A45 and a massive hole in the ground (workings for a depleted sand and gravel quarry). Plenty of work and 'potential' and over time house and land have shaped our lives, and we have restored the property. Previously city-dwellers we became happily rural.

Its quite a learning curve. Lesson 1: grass can get out of hand when you have four acres of it, so eventually we needed some form of grass guzzler. Mechanical or animal? Turns out sheep eat grass and appealed to us (small enough for us city wimps to handle). So we bought some sheep, lambed sheep, learned all sorts of sheep husbandry including shearing and - eventually - I learned to spin. Rather like the surplus of grass leading to sheep the surplus of fleece led to spinning. (The surplus of yarn led to other things which I will get into later ...)

So involvement with sheep started the ball of yarn rolling, although I did not realise it then.

We only have three sheep now. A family group of ancient Jacobs. These are a coloured (piebald) sheep breed which can have two or four horns. Or sometimes a different number. The two-horned mother here (Rosemary - now aged 15), has a daughter (Rosemary's baby as it were) who is currently 3-and-a-bit horned and was inititally five horned. She is a venerable 13 years and they keep company with sister/aunt Radish. They stay close together and walk slowly with lots of rest breaks.

Rosemary as shearling (Moreton Show)

I have had lots of experience spinning wool from these particular Jacobs. It is medium staple wool, finer than you would expect, low crimp and greyer than it when young (see picture of Rosemary aged under a year old with deep brown patches). Conventional spinning wisdom is that fleece of a shearling (ie. from first shearing) will be the loveliest. But wool from our grass fed, happy sheep seems to just get better and better. During Warwickshire Open Studios 2020 arts weeks (20th June - 5th July) we are in lockdown. You can't get to meet the sheep or visit my studio. So I plan to do a blog post every day showing the transition of fleece from these sheep to finished fabric.

There could well be distractions and diversions along the way but these sheep provide the thread that runs through my stories of creative work during the arts weeks. Follow along with my journey.