Preparing wool for spinning

Before I start preparing it, usually straight after shearing I remove bits from round the neck and legs and bottom which are dirty and matted as well removing any particualrly short bits.

Then comes the preparation for spinning.

First I wash it.
I do this in a giant pan, one fleece at a time. One day I will have a second sink in the kitchen to help with things like this. At the moment it is a faff doing it in the shower - the water doesn’t come out hot enough so lots of kettlefuls of water needed.
I fill the pan with water that is 55 °C as lanolin melts around 45°C. I add either fabric washing liquid or dish soap depending how I feel.
I put the wool in and plunge it up and down very slowly a few times to make sure the water has got through the wool. If you swish it around too much, it felts.
I then leave it for quite a few hours, perhaps over night.
I then empty the pan and refill with warm water at about 30°C and again swish gently then leave.
I repeat this with 30° water one more time. By this time the water is clearish. If it is not I rinse again.
Then I drain it well on a cake tray and then dry it on the clothes drying rack somewhere warm but out of the sun.

Next I pick it
This is basically going through the whole giant mess of wool that you have and pulling it all apart in to fluffy lumps. You can get tools to do it (one day!) which are basically two sheets of nails which are repeatedly pulled through the wool. By hand you just pull out bits and put them in a bag. It should be really fluffy when you finish this with no obvious lumps. You remove bits of grass and stuff as you go. Best to do somewhere you can easily hoover as all kinds of grott comes out if the fleece.

Poppy likes to help with picking

Carding
I then card it. You can do this with hand carders, but at the moment I always use the drum carder as it is auucjer. The hand carders look interesting when you want different preparations, but my spinning isn’t ready for that yet.

Now it is beautiful fluffy fleece ready to spin!

Homegrown hat

This hat is made from homegrown, home sheared, carded, spun and knitted wool. So exciting!
The finished hat

Dagmar who provided the white wool

Raasay who provided the black wool

The following information is mostly for me.
I used 5mm magic loop needles
Cast on 88 stitched. I calculated by knitting a bit to get an idea of stitches to 10cm then measuring circumference of my head and taking of 4cm.
Length from brim to top is 20cm
The thin lines are 2 rows and the wider one 6 rows. The final row and casting off was in brown (three needle cast off).
The brown round the rim I sewed on with blanket stitch.

Drum carder

Despite Doug’s protests (where’s it going to GO - which is of course a valid concern, but we don’t want to let reality and practical things intrude *too* much on our dreams!) I bought a drum carder to make preparing wool for spinning a bit easier and quicker.
It is fantastic! I cannot say it make my spinning good yet, but it is a lot easier to do from the more even preperation the drum carder provides. On the whole things that slow down how fast I can knit are good, otherwise we will be inundated with knitted products. However there becomes a point where it is too slow and hard and I lose interest.

Exciting new toy

Or, I am excited at least! Doug maybe not so much. There's no space!
I was intending to start off with Alpaca wool that the man we bought the highland cows from gave me. However I have discovered that Alpaca is more difficult to start off with, than sheeps wool because it doesn't have little scales on it which help the wool fibers grab together.
So I have carded some of the Ouessant wool and I am going to give that a go.
The wheel is a Lendrum DP from Canada. I haven't managed to set it up to actually work yet as we have been so busy this weekend going to a friend's birthday party, recovering from the hangover, looking after cows and feeding some friends animals. It is meant to be a great beginner wheel that is great for more advanced spinners too. It packs flat for storage and easy travel.

Carding Alpaca wool

The guy we got the highlands from (and who owns the bull they recently went to visit) also has alpaca. I mentioned I am learning to spin and he gave me some alpaca wool - we recently lent him our horse trailer to take some of his cows to a show. I have finally got round to starting to card it having washed it some time ago.

I am planning on spinning it with a drop spindle, but am feeling tempted to buy a 'proper' spinning wheel - but where would it GO??? There is a travelling one by Ashford though!

Spinning

Coo man (that's what we call the nice man who sold us the highlands) gave us some alpaca wool. I have set about washing it as all wool off animals that have been outdoors is FILTHY. I will then need to card it.

In the mean time I have been practicing my spinning on some wool I bought before we moved out here. The advice was don't try to learn to spin on wool you have cut and carded yourself because you will have done that a bit shonkily and then the next step will be hard too - so buy yourself some nice professionally prepared wool to start on. It is quite hard and what I have done so far has lumpy bits and skinny bits and is very uneven. I presume it is like knitting and if I just keep at it it will start getting better.

I have also washed some of our sheeps wool and hope to have a go at that too.