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.