Spinning right from the source

This is too good. Spinning wool right from a Shetland sheep. This beats the traditional sheep-to-shawl competitions and demos.

Staying on top of the stash

Remember when I mentioned Priscilla-the fleece-less-sheep-who-lords-over-the-guest-bedroom-looking-for-her-fleece? Well, she can have it. I want to give it back. She can have it. She can have them all. Every fleece I have. What started with one fleece has turned into, umm, 8, no, err, ten or is it 12? And we aren't even counting the rovings, the batts, the bags of smaller batches, and yarn...well let's not even think about that. Well, it is too many fleeces and life is too short. Besides, too many fleeces can be way too daunting. How can one choose which one to spin when you have too many? Then there are the standards each fleece needs to meet: cleanliness; purity, colour; handle; crimp; etc. . The bar rises higher with each fleece added to the hoard. Each new fleece gives you more reasons not to use the older ones. But the new one is too precious to use. It should only be used for the special project that just calls for the perfect matching fleece. So each fleece gets added to the guest bedroom. It goes in but never comes out. 

[Photo: a pearl perfect Bluefaced
Leicester fleece - setting the bar]

I know all this but I think I have a plan to keep the fleeces going in but also coming out. I will, from now on, only buy the very best fleeces. This will mean each fleece is excellent, I will just have to match a fleece with a project. So, with that in mind, I just bought the most beautiful Bluefaced Leicester fleece from Lorrie on Saltspring Island. Bluefaced Leicester is silky, lustrous, springy and pearly. Yes, the plied yarn will resemble a string of pearls. You can see the pearls in the picture. This is a fleece that Priscilla-the fleece-less-sheep-who-lords-over-the-guest-bedroom-looking-for-her-fleece can't have.

Shetland wool - It's a first!

Shetland wool has now received protected status. Just as Champagne, or Feta and Camembert Cheese is protected, ie. you can't sell products using those names, unless of course, you have produced them in those geographic areas that hold the right to use those names. So Shetland wool is the first non-food item to be protected in the EU.
More good news to the Shetland Islanders who are finally making more money from shearing their sheep than it costs to shear them.  

see earlier blog about the Shetlands.

[Photo: Not perfect but close enough
 to 1 TPI]

Speaking of Shetland wool, I have an assignment to spin a 2-ply yarn at 1 Twist Per Inch. Sounds easy. It wasn't! I finally achieved something close to that using a lovely Shetland combed top that I bought from Jamieson and Smith Woolbrokers in Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. This is a beautiful wool, a pleasure to spin and knowing the fineness one can spin this, it was, in a way, a shame to spin it so thick. But, I was pleased with how it came out. Now I just wished I had purchased more. But you can order it online here.

The Cotswolds

The Cotswolds sheep has what I think is a rich looking fleece with long, lustrous locks of curly ringlets. It is classified as a coarse fibre, but that just means it has a larger diameter than, say, Merino which is a fine fibre. But coarse is a description, not a comment on quality. A better description is that it is a longwool, and that, it is, measuring 6 - 12" in staple length. The locks are often sold as Santa Claus beard.  If you are making something that needs to be hard wearing, a rug, or a tough outdoorsy jacket, then you want a fibre like a Cotswold. But other, more, interesting things can be made. According to Wikipedia, the fibre was often a substitute for linen and was spun and woven very finely along with strands of gold to make rich garments for priests and Kings. And check out this wedding dress done by this shepherdess in an article by the Daily Mirror.

[Photo: Wedding dress of Cotswold locks.
Photo by  Jon Corken of the Daily Mirror]

Cotswold is also known as poor mans mohair because of it's luster. So let's forget the 'coarse' description.
If the locks are prepared in true worsted fashion, that is: hand combed so that all the fibres are parallel and any nips, noils (tangles), and short fibres removed; and then spun carefully also in worsted fashion by smoothing down the fibres and making sure you spin from the cut end to the tip end so that all the tips point in the same direction, then the lustre will be maximized and those who suffer itchiness from wool will find this preparation much nicer to wear.  A woman I know who teaches spinning and who did her Master Spinners research project on spinning for tapestry yarns, found that just by altering the tips to ends or end to tip or plying one with the other or plying all tips to end, the fibre could produce a variety of lustre or yarns that reflect light differently, hence one colour, say blue, spun in various preparations gave her enough reflection variation that she could use it for the ocean and have it showing different patterns of reflected light, just like water will do.
So there we were in the Cotswolds, coming back from an unsucessful trip to Oxford Pit River Museum where the Coast Salish Blanket I had hoped to see had been removed from display for an unknown period but I digress. So there we were on our way back to my brother's place, when we saw the sign for The Wool Church in Northleach, and did a quick detour.
When the British economy was built on wool, it was the Cotswold sheep that provided riches to the wool merchants and tax revenues to the King..

Baa Baa black sheep,
Have you any wool?

Yes sir, yes sir,

Three bags full.
One for the Master,
one for the Dame,
and one for the little boy 
who lives down the lane.

Children s nursery rhyme from mid 1700's, and was also the first song
 to be digitally recorded and played on a computer.

[Photo: John Fortey, Died 1458]

And it was here in this church that some of the wealthy merchants and their families are buried  with brass plaques memorials, with their image, some with their wive and some including small pictures of their children.
Take John Fortey, woolman of Northleach who died in 1458 and left $300 pounds, a magnificent sum in those days, to the church. His brass, which is five feet long depicts his image and tells you who and what he is: with one foot on a Cotswold sheep and the other resting on a bag of wool.
But that was then, now, sheep are being raised mostly for their meat and that does not bode well for the many rare breeds of sheep found around the world...although:  on Saltspring Island, where a friend raised sheep for meat and some wool for herself, now has switched to wool sheep since the new abattoir laws in BC which means it is now more expensive to take sheep off the island to officially approved and licensed abattoirs .

[Photo: John Fortey's feet: one on a
Cotswold sheep and the other on a bag of wool]

So while the slow local food movement takes a step back on Saltspring Island, on one farm at least, the wool sheep gains.  And on the Shetland islands where Shetland sheep are raised, they have lately been left to 'rue' that is to naturally shed their fleece.  Since paying for shearing cost more than they could get for their fleece, it wasn't worth shearing.  But lately, the price of wool has risen and now the sheep are getting shorn and the farmers are making some money on wool.
So maybe the wool fortunes will return to the Cotswolds.

[Photo: Small brass of a sheep and a bag of wool]

The Ronnies

[Photo: North Ronaldsey seaweed eating sheep.  
Photo by Ian Caldwell]

When I travel, I like to have a quest, an aim, something to search for on the trip. A ràison d'detre, so to speak. For the Orkney Islands the quest was to find some fleece from a North Rhonaldsay sheep. These rare breed sheep are rather unique in the world as they have evolved to be able to survive on eating seaweed. Not just as a side dish or in a pinch, but they really live on it. They have developed special bacteria to break down the seaweed into a usable carbohydrate.  Recently, in an attempt to create a few flocks and protect the DNA pool, some Ronnies (aka Rolies) were sent to mainland Scotland and England. Mysteriously, they started to die. It turned out that there is so little copper in seaweed that the North Ronaldsay sheep have developed super absorbency of copper.  So when they moved inland and ate normal amounts of copper, they died from copper poisoning.  Once identified, it was easy to treat.  Interestingly, after two generations, the sheep adapted again and could handle normal intakes of copper.


Our schedule did not quite allow or me to fly from Mainland Orkney Island to North Ronaldsey, so I was disapointed and very envious when I received en email from another spinner from the Qualicum Guild who had the week before I arrived, gone to North Ronaldsay (population 60), saw the sheep, met the one woman crusader who has established a fibre mill on the island, had a tour, met knitters and spinners and had a wonderful time on a knitting tour!  I emailed Karen and she emailed me some tips on where to find some fleece on the main island.

[Photo:Tall ships at Stromness, the Orkneys]

Not only did I find some fleece, beautiful light brown roving, thanks to Karen, but by accident I ran into another woman who keeps North Ronaldsay sheep on a different island.  We happened to be in the Orkneys for the Tall Ships races and the town of Stromness where the main street had been turned into a Fair as part of the welcoming of the tall ships.
And there, at a booth at the fair was fleece!  Rugs.  Stone slate spindles.  Yarn. And Teresa.   Teresa who, with her husband and three sons, live on the remote Isle of Auskerry (click on this link to read all about her life on this hauntingly beautiful island).  Remember, this is where the North Atlantic meets the Norwegian and North Seas.  The wind blows here.  It blows gales.  And often.  This means you, and the sheep, have to be pretty self-sufficient.  If you leave the island, you may not be able to get back for weeks...and vice versa.
Teresa has over, I think she said 300 Ewes and 600 lambs.  This is the 2nd largest flock in the UK!

[Photo: North Ronaldsay fibre.  Very fine
down fibres with longer guard hair fibres]

Teresa sells the tanned fleece hides (very soft) and yarns she has spun.  This is a beautifully soft fleece. The down is a fine fine down, about 28 microns thick. That is a medium wool and kid mohair grade.  It feels silky.  Silky in the way seaweed feels silky.  Or in Scotch brogue, It has a fine hand.  She also sells the fleece and her products over the Internet.  The wool throws she has woven by hand are warm and silky.  So support this rare breed and buy some of her products: http://isleofauskerry.com/

Navajo Churra - Is it only good for rugs?

"What the heck is this dirty fleece doing in this garbage bag? Either throw it out or get on with it, for gads sake." This was followed by more muttering, sounds of stomping (of the four-hoof variety) and bags being thrown around the room. So ended my all of two minutes, peaceful chance of revival. Six days and nights of non-stop activity and Priscilla, Queen of the Fleece, had chosen this one and only moment of R & R to bellow out those words from the guest bedroom.  
Upon peeking into the bedroom, I saw that she was referring to the Navajo Churro i had picked up at my first Fibre Fair, where, I perhaps overly excited to see fleeces for sale in large green garbage bags. Whole fleeces. There was Romney, Shetland, and Navajo Churra which I had never seen before. I stuck my hand in the exotic Navajo Churro, piched, pulled and squeezed. It was soft and clean. I bought it without hestitating and then proudly dragged the bag around the room with me as I hunted for other fibre treasures. A sheep farmer spotted by Navajo and tossed her hair while declaring "That's only good for rugs." I sheepishly tried to hide it as she informed me of all the other fleeces that were good for a whole variety of other things. The implication being that Navajjo Churra was good for nothing...but rugs. And I had thought it soft. So much for my skills at checking out a fleece. 

And so it stayed in the guest bedroom in a, err, natural state. Now Priscilla, Queen of the Fleece, was demanding that I wash it. So I did. It still feels soft to me.  

Navajo Churro was brought over to the Americas by the Spanish and the Navajo quickly adopted it. They are hardy and produce a double coat; a long hairy outer coat and a soft downy inner coat. It washed easily in small batches as there is very little lanolin in the wool. I decided to experiment and pulled the long coarse hairs away from the soft downy wool. You can pull them apart or use a coarse comb I used a horse comb (see an earlier blog), separated them and ran them through the drum carder. The white is the long coarser hairs and the grey the soft downy wool. It still feel soft to me, but now I can get three different types of wool from the one fleece, a soft wool, a tough wiry coarse wool (good for warps and rugs) and a mixture which would be good for outer wear.
The fleece probably would have rotted away if Priscilla hadn't made me wash it. I should thank her. But I won't.

Now what?

Finally. I managed to finish the last of the Gotand fleece. It was beautiful to spin, soft, light, silky and smooth. I tried to sort it by shade and came up with three pronounced shades: light oatmeal, light gray and dark gray. Here's the stats:

• Weight: 774grams (@ 1lb. 10 oz.)
• Yardage: 967.5 meters...I think
• Single ply whorl ratio: 8:1
• Ply ratio: 6:1
• Twist angle: 200
• Wraps per inch (WPI) single: 12
• Wraps per inch (WPI) plied: 6
• Spinning method: Drum carded, stripped and worsted forward draft

All his looks confident when seen in print, but know this: I am not confident in my own stats. It is all a little by guess and by golly, but a starting point if I want to try and do some more.

And the BIG question now facing me is 'Now what?'. What to do with it?