Current Project - Unknown fleece - Stage 1

A few months ago while at an SCA Fibre Guild gathering at Tina's house, she handed me a large plastic bag of fleece.  Not sure what I was going to do with it, it was unceremoniously put aside and kept on getting moved around until I decided it was in my way and that I had to do something with it.

We don't actually know what breed the sheep is.  It is definitely a long wool breed as the locks are just over 25cm (10") long.  The closest that I could find in The Fleece and Fibre Sourcebook (Robson and Ekarius, 2011) is a Wenseleydale.  The description and colour range match the pictures and description in the book.

Now I have only ever processed a couple of fleeces before so I knew that I had to soak and wash it before I could do anything with it, so into the bath tub it went.  Warm water, half a bottle of regular hair shampoo and a jolly good soak.  With some gentle agitating to break out the dirt, urine and goop; rinse and repeat several times, the fleece came out pretty good.

Half of the washed fleece

Once dried, I started pulling locks out and sorting them into length and colour.  Sadly, this is not my strong point and I could do with some more practice at this.

I have picked approximately half the fleece into locks and stored them in cardboard boxes.  The unpicked fleece is currently living in a large pink plastic box that has no lid.  It just makes it easy to move.

Due to the fleece being a long wool, it is perfect for Viking Wool Combs, however as I have been slack and now unemployed, I do not have the funds to purchase either the finished combs, nor the materials to make them.  I did try a hair comb but that didn't produce the fibre that I was wanting. So another strategy had to be used to prepare the fibres for spinning.  A flick carder was the answer.  Now I do have one of these.  The flick carder produces a soft fluffy, mostly parallel lock for spinning.  This would allow me to create a semi-worsted yarn.  Flick carding will not remove all of the really short hairs as a wool comb would, but it does remove some, so the yarn is not as spiky as it could possibly be.

Flick carded lock with cut end to the right.

So then the next thing was, how do I spin it?  That was answered by my hubby.  "On a wheel so that it is done sooner."

Who am I spinning it for?  Pretty early in the process I decided to spin it up and give it back to Tina as a finished product.  This then had a part in how I was going to spin it.  Tina is a stickler for authenticity and required me to crack out the book Textile and Clothing 1150 - 1450 from The Museum of London.  Page 26 states that "mixed spinning (Z spun warp / S spun weft)  where all the fibres lay in the same direction when woven, produces a firmer cloth suitable for raising a nap and for other types of finishing.

I figured this would be a good process.  As I am flick carding, there is a 'waste' amount of fibre that is being put into a container.  I will card this with paired cards later and S spin it for the weft threads.

As a consequence, this fleece will not be plied and will remain as singles ready for weaving.