Sheep Shearing
A half sheared sheep.The first step in processing the wool is to collect it. Shearing can be done with use of hand-shears (tools that look like big scissors) or powered shears. Professional sheep shearers can shear a sheep in under a minute, without nicking the sheep once. At many state fairs there are sheep shearing contests, to see who can shear a sheep the fastest. These contests mainly include older men, with only a few youngsters.
Wool in a shearing shedWhen the fleece comes off the sheep it should be in one piece. Also, it is best if the shearer cuts close enough to the skin that a second cutting is not required. Second cuts make for very short fibers, which are more difficult and not as much fun to deal with and spin. Primitive breeds, like the Scottish Soay sheep have to be plucked, not sheared, as the kemps are still longer than the soft fleece, (a process called rooing) or the fleece must be collected from the field after it falls out.
Skirting
Skirting basically means disposing of all wool that is unsuitable for spinning (too short, has sheep dung in it, etc.) One often could spin this wool, with much extra effort, if one wanted. (The dung can be washed out, the short fibers - though with greater difficulty than longer ones - can be spun, and other objections can be similarly dealt with.) Thus this step can be skipped if necessary. It can also be done at the same time as carding.
Cleaning
Before carding the wool, it must be cleaned. At this point the fleece is full of lanolin and often contains vegetable matter, such as sticks, twigs, burs and straw. One way to prevent the vegetable matter from getting into the fleece is to have the sheep wear a coat all year round.
At this point there are two ways to go. The first is to simply pick out the vegetable matter, and move on to the next step. The lanolin is kept in the wool. People who enjoy spinning 'in the grease' (i.e. spinning with the lanolin still in the wool) prefer this method, and wait to wash the lanolin out until they finish spinning. The lanolin can be left in the wool after spinning as well, making the fabric or garment water repellent. If one doesn't want to spin in the grease, the other option is to take both the vegetable matter and the lanolin out.
Washing the wool at this stage can be a tedious process, if you let it. Some people wash it a small handful at a time very carefully, and then set it out to dry on a table in the sun. Other people will stick the whole fleece in a tub of water and soap (dishwashing detergent works well), let it sit, swish it around, and refill the tub with new water occasionally until the fleece is clean (of soap and dirt). One carding mill puts the fleece in a washing machine (that has been slightly modified for this purpose) and melts the lanolin away by soaking the fleece in very hot water. All these methods work. The thing not to do when washing fleece is to rub it against itself too much. If the fleece gets agitated, it will become felt, and then spinning it is impossible. Felting, when done on purpose (with needles, chemicals, or simply rubbing the fibers against each other), can be used to create garments.
Carding or combing
Before spinning it is a good idea to get the fleece into a slightly more manageable state. It is possible to spin directly from a fleece, if it is a very clean one, but it is much easier to spin a carded fleece. Carding by hand yields a rolag, a loose woollen roll of fibers. Using a drum carder yields a bat, which is a mat of fibers in a flat, rectangular shape. Most carding mills return the fleece in a roving, which is a stretched bat; it is very long and often the thickness of a wrist. (A pencil roving is a roving thinned to the width of a pencil. It is often used for knitting without any spinning, or for beginning spinners.)
Many hand-spinners send their wool out to carding mills to be carded, as one good-sized fleece may take weeks to card with a drum-carder, or an eternity by hand. If the fleece is sent to a carding mill, it must be washed before carded. Most mills offer washing the wool as a service, with extra fees if the wool is exceptionally dirty. Other hand-spinners simply buy their fibers pre-carded.
Another technique, less used on raw fleece, is that of combing. Combing is another method to align the fibers parallel to the yarn, and thus is good for spinning a worsted yarn, whereas the rolag from handcards produces a woolen yarn.
Spinning
A spinning wheel used to make yarn.Hand spinning can be done many different ways, the two most common being by use of the spinning wheel or the spindle. Spinning turns the carded wool fibers into yarn which can then be directly woven, knitted (flat or circular), crocheted, or by other means turned into fabric or a garment.
Removing the yarn from the wheel
When spinning on a spinning wheel, the yarn collects on a bobbin. Once the bobbin is full, the spinner can either put on a new bobbin, form a skein, or ball the yarn.
A lazy kate with bobbins on it in preparation for plying.If the yarn is to be plied then the most common action is to put a new bobbin on the wheel, and leave the yarn on the bobbin so that the spinner can ply directly from the bobbin. This makes for greatest ease when plying, but cannot be done if the spinner does not have enough bobbins. When plying from bobbins a device called a lazy kate is often used to hold the bobbins.
A niddy noddy ready to have a skein wound on it.If the spinner has the end result (i.e. the yarn is already plied or is not going to be), then most likely they will make a skein out of the yarn. A skein is a coil of yarn twisted into a loose knot. It is either formed on a niddy noddy or some other type of skein winder. Traditionally niddy-noddys looked like an uppercase "i", with the bottom half rotated 90 degrees [1]. Now spinning wheel manufactures also make niddy-noddys that attach onto the spinning wheel [2] for faster skein winding.
Rarely is the yarn balled directly after spinning. Normally hand-spun yarn will be stored in skein form, and transferred to a ball only if needed. (For example, knitting from a skein, unless done very carefully, ends up with the yarn in knots, so it is best to ball it first.)
Ply
Plying yarn is when one takes a strand of spun yarn (one strand is often called a single) and spins it together with other strands in order to make a thicker yarn. There are several ways, the most common being regular and Navajo.
Regular plying consists of taking two or more singles and twisting them together, the opposite way. This can be done on either a spinning wheel or a spindle. The most important thing to remember though is that the twist must go the opposite direction. If in spinning the single the wheel was spinning clockwise (which is called a "Z" twist, as on any given side the fibers appear to cross diagonally in the same direction as the diagonal of a "Z"), in order to ply it the wheel must spin counter-clockwise (an "S" twist). This is because otherwise you are not balancing the twist, just twisting it more. The concept is similar to when a heavily twisted piece of yarn is folded, and it twists up on itself. It is most common for singles to be spun with a "Z" twist, and then plied with an "S" twist.
Navajo plying consists of making large loops, similar to crocheting. First make a loop about 8 inches long through the loop on the end on the leader. (A leader is the string left on the bobbin to spin off.) Start spinning all three strands together in the opposite direction than that they were spun in. When only 2 to 3 inches (76 mm) remain of the loop, pull a new loop of yarn through the loop, and continue spinning. The new loop should be around 7 inches (180 mm) long. Repeat this process until the yarn is all plied. Only one single is necessary, and if the single is already dyed this technique allows it to be plied without ruining the color scheme. This technique also allows the spinner to try to match up thick and thin spots in the yarn, thus making for a smoother end product.
Most spinners (who use spinning wheels) ply from bobbins. This is easier than plying from balls because there is less chance for the yarn to become tangled and knotted if it is simply unwound from the bobbins. So that the bobbins can unwind freely, they are put in a device called a lazy kate, or sometimes simply kate. The simplest lazy kate consists of wooden bars with a metal rod running between them. Most hold between three and four bobbins. The bobbin sits on the metal rod. Other lazy kates are built with devices that create an adjustable amount of tension, so that if the yarn is jerked, a whole bunch of yarn is not wound off, then wound up again in the opposite direction. Some spinning wheels come with a built in lazy kate. Picture of lazy kates, with tension device.
Washing
See also: Fulling
If the lanolin was not washed out before, this is the point at which it gets washed out, unless the lanolin is to be left in the cloth as a water repellent. When washing a skein it works well to let the wool soak in soapy water overnight, and rinse the soap out in the morning. Dishwashing detergents are commonly used, and a special laundry detergent designed for washing wool is not required. The dishwashing detergent works and does not harm the wool. After washing, let the wool dry (air drying works best). Once it is dry, or just a bit damp, one can stretch it out a bit on a niddy-noddy. Putting the wool back on the niddy-noddy makes for a nicer looking finished skein. Before taking a skein and washing it, the skein must be tied up loosely in about six places. If the skein is not tied up, it will be very hard to unravel when done washing.
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