Wool in Sheep's Clothing

It is amazing to me that when you see white sheep in the field, they really look white. White and curly and cute. And when you buy roving, it is so soft, white and clean. So when I started learning to deal with wool from shearing to roving, I got a big surprise.

Sheep Grazing, New Zealand by Mick Roessler

Shalom Hills, a Lutheran retreat and working farm, is only about 9 miles from here. My brother-in-law, Norm, is one of the hired hands there. He does a variety of jobs, but one of them is care of the animals. They have goats, sheep and now a llama. We don’t have any idea what kind of sheep these are, except they are part Corriedale. This year, Norm called Connie and me over when they were shearing the sheep. We had asked to buy a fleece and he wanted us to pick it out, on the hoof. Now I know absolutely nothing about how to pick good quality wool, though I am trying to learn. I am so inexperienced that I’m not even sure of the correct terminology. I was expecting course short wool and didn’t care. I really wanted this fleece to learn the process and to practice on. So the shearer picked out one of last year’s lambs for me. I was pleasantly surprised with the length and the crimp. But I was very dismayed to see the color, all the dirt and the straw and grass. The big yearling had looked so white in the corner of the barn.

My raw white wool. Yuck. Will it ever be white?

I definitely had second thoughts about spending any money on this dirty stuff. Do I really want to buy this? It looked like I would never be able to work with it. But then Margaret, co-owner of the farm told Connie and me that we could have the fleece, because Norm does so much work for them. She wouldn’t charge us anything (thank you, Norm). Well, for free, I’d try it. So I brought it home and put it in my shop to deal with later. I read articles and more articles on washing wool, picking and carding wool and combing wool. According to them, even the dirtiest wool will come clean and can be worked with. And after reading them, I realized this wool was not THAT bad (I hoped).

Well, later is here. I have been washing wool for 2 days. And since this was at no cost, I decided to experiment and have also been dyeing it. And look what I have now.

Canary yellow, ready to comb. Blue is in the dye pot right now.

I guess all the books and articles really do know what they are talking about. After washing, dyeing and sorting for the combs, it looks like I have some very nice wool. And the wool I left natural really does look white. Hubby is thrilled….no more smelly raw wool in the house.

So now on to the next step, combing the locks. I have decided to try combing, since I have already done the picking and carding thing. Connie lent me her English Combs (didn’t I tell she was good to me?) and I will try them in the next couple days. I’ll let you know how it goes.