You can lose as much as half the weight of the fleece by washing the grease and dirt out, so be sure to purchase enough, especially if you are wanting to use natural colored wools, as it may be impossible to match, even with another fleece from the same animal. Blending/Dyeing 4. This Instruc… Washing individual clumps or locks of wool is a good way to work your way through the fleece if you don’t have the space or inclination to wash it all at once. Thanks to this, most of the tail wool is missing, but it was easy to tell the tail end, on the right of the picture, because the locks were so much coarser and full of hairy kemp fibres. Attached you’ll find a picture of the most recent. The sheared fleece is sorted based on the quality of fibres obtained from different parts of the animal's bod. I wanted to try weaving with raw fleece. I'm going to take a shot at this without “cheating” (doing additional research). Define fineness. This can be deceiving, as it will wash out. The idea of washing a sheep’s wool intimidates you? This is the raw fleece of a Blue Texel sheep. It's kind of golden and shiny--a nice luster. Sell it as raw fleece? 5 x blue face leister x fleeces. Keep it for yourself? Spinning 6. This is the basic way to choose a raw fleece for quality and pricing. I have to admit that I cheat. Washing raw wool (often referred to as scouring) removes dirt, straw, and wool grease – lanolin from the sheep fleece. It is essential to remember that exposing raw wool to heat and agitation will cause it to “felt”. This spring I want to discuss shearing, washing … SOME wear. Follow the instructions above, but when you’re working with a small amount of wool at a time, you can use a sink or washing tub. Llama Definitions and Terms: Apron This is called flystrike. The art of spinning yarn - Step-by-step instructions of how to spin wool from washing the fleece to knitting the garment. Alpaca Fleece . After shearing, the fleece needs to be ... Then comes the washing. To wash fleece, use a mild detergent. The 10 Acre Woods 64,758 views. How To Clean Raw Wool. This gives an idea of the color the lanolin adds to the raw fleece. All you have to take care is not to feel the fabric more than necessary. This fleece must be cleaned before it can be processed into wool yarn. Carding 5. This is sheep fleece as it comes off the Sheep, without washing or processing. As our fleeces are not washed they are rich in natural lanolin, so have a “greasy” texture. You can avoid doing so by washing it without touching it too much, wringing, scrubbing or even letting water run over it. The processing of a raw wool fleece into weaving yarn is routine among the Navajo shepherds and weavers, or at least it once was. Define clip. Raw Sheep Fleece. via GIPHY So what do you do with this wonderful bag of warm, fuzzy fluff? Any questions, please email. I fill the tub with the hottest water I can get, add either Dawn dishwashing detergent as you mention, or one of the made-for-fleece detergents, which are considerably more expensive, and no more effective than Dawn. The professionals that I know don't clean the fleece nearly enough for my taste, I have paid to have fleece washed, only to have to do it myself all over again, now I don't bother paying someone else, but I have learned to be very picky about what fleece I will buy. Or process it and sell the finished product? PICK-UP FROM Shipping to United Kingdom (CASH ON COLLECTION PLEASE)/YOU CAN ARRANGE COURIER TO COLLECT. So I asked my Navajo weaving friend Roy Kady of Teec Nos Pos, Arizona (www.dinewoven.com) on the Navajo Reservation only 60 miles southwest of Cortez Colorado, to show and teach us the steps involved. Improper washing of the sheep fleece can cause damage to the material. Fleece The shorn wool coat is called a fleece. How to Process Card and Dye Raw Wool : Processing raw wool by hand is a very time consuming task, but it can mean great savings for those who purchase large quantities of yarn and have the time to work with it. Greasy Fleece . I grew up on a farm, and we had sheep, and my mom sheared the sheep’s wool to make yarn. Now What? A raw fleece of course! If you do live in a humid climate, make sure there is good ventilation where you store your fleece. The siny, crimped locks on the right are still "in the grease." It has been grown while the sheep have been out grazing ... the process of turning raw fleece into carded wool is quite time-consuming. We will show you how to clean the fleece, how to wash the fleece, then how to card the fleece into rovings and then finally how to spin your fleece into beautiful yarn. raw wool fleeces, the sheep were sheared june/july this year. Raw fleece. To give you my own view: I personally have spun fleece both in the grease and after washing -- and my own preference is almost always to wash a fleece before spinning. I have my own washing machine. It is also called "grease wool" because of all the oil and lanolin in the wool. Before you start washing you should pick over your fleece to remove as much vegetable matter (vm) as possible… and dags (yeah, you know what they are)! ... and the hatched maggots feed on the flesh of these animals. Information about raw wool in the AudioEnglish.org dictionary, synonyms and antonyms. To avoid this, farmers cut the folds of skin from around the tails of the sheep, and this is usually carried out without anesthesia. Rotate your fleece… For larger fleeces, or extremely dirty fleeces, I prefer the Suint Fermentation Method of cleaning (also called the FSM, or Fermented Suint Method).When we get our Teeswater fleeces, they come unskirted. Get this step right and all the next steps will go smoothly and you will get … Although unwashed, it had very little dried grass in it and had been cleared of all matted dirt - in short, no sheep shit. All of our fleeces are sold as raw fleece, lightly skirted. In this video I talk about how to wash a "raw" sheep or goat fleece. Fleece Picking: remove yucky bits and vm first. Many folks are curious about the details of this procedure. All our fleeces receive several initial sorts by hand before packing, so you won’t get a matted lump of belly wool or a load of dags contaminating the rest of the fleece. Too much agitation causes the fleece to felt and tangle, while grease left behind from missed lanolin makes the wool prone to rips and tears. raw sheep fleece . . The wool from one flock. Well it is not much different from washing a sweater if you know the tiny do’s and don’ts. This is the wool and not a "skin". Washing fleece for handspinning Why wash your fleece? 3. You may also like to divide your fleece up into different sections. I feel it is best to buy a fleece that has been just sheared… Washing locks. And that is what this post is really about. Sometimes as much as 50% of the weight of the fleece is not wool. An essential companion for spinners of all levels, The Spinner’s Book of Fleece (Storey Publishing, 2014) by Beth Smith provides fleece profiles of … What does raw wool mean? This is the fleece from Moose Moose’s rear end area —– I would never have guessed how lovely it would be, based on the raw … : A dear friend and fellow fiber enthusiast generously gifted me several pounds of raw alpaca fleece in 3 colors - black, white, and cinnamon brown. Define fleece. In the January 2010 newsletter, we talked about keeping your sheep’s wool in tip-top shape in preparation for shearing (see “Winter Care for a Cleaner Fleece”). Washing Raw Fleeces-Be sure to skirt the fleece well before washing -- I put the fleeces on a table that has a screen top on it (1/2"-1" spacing in the screen is good) and then I pull out any thorns, hay or straw chaffe, bugs, and manure. ... metal contraption used to keep the tension across the weave (see photos below). So, the sheared hair of sheep are thoroughly cleaned by washing with soap (or detergent) and a lot of water in tanks. The fleece of sheep (or cut hair of sheep) contains dust, dirt, dried sweat and grease, etc. Also called greasy/raw wool. The wool from 1 sheep, usually sheared in one piece. In general, fine wools have a lot of grease, easily 15 to 16 percent of the weight of the fleece, while the fiber may be about 40 percent of a raw fleece. Many breeders are willing to sell you their fleeces, in some cases, even give it away. I asked my friend and Fiber Artist, Lynda Collins, for her favorite method of washing raw … I’ve been in the process of washing a couple small batches and oh, my, goodness! It arrived safe and sound, but I’ve been away for a bit. The fiber diameter of the wool, ... Washing/Scouring 3. Weaving or Knitting (for niche markets) 7. Scouring makes the fleece of sheep clean. This process of washing of sheared hair is called scouring. Grease content of wool is important: If too much lanolin is left in the wool it will repel the dye in places, resulting in a mottled effect, yet a small amount of it makes spinning easier and deepens the colors. Great article on washing fleeces. I became a spinner by accident really. I wanted to gain some experience working with raw wool before I invested a lo… It’s perfectly possible to spin fleece straight from the sheep without washing it, but this technique may not suit your purpose or your wool. Raw, unwashed fleece contains lanolin (grease produced by the sheep), suint (dried sweat), dust and farmyard dirt, and fragments of vegetable matter. Even though washing raw sheep fleece requires only a few items and little prep time, you can still wash it incorrectly. 2. A Dorset Down Ewe Fleece, hand-sorted and packed ready for posting. Proper usage and audio pronunciation (plus IPA phonetic transcription) of the word raw wool. Washing wool fleece is the first step to getting it ready for carding. Mark all your fleece containers with the type of fleece and date it was sheared. The summer fleece (sheared in the autumn) is considered to be of higher quality. Definition of raw wool in the AudioEnglish.org Dictionary. The scoured fleece is then dried. Processing Our Raw Sheep Wool Into Yarn - Duration: 24:58. Happy Dance! But not all fleeces are suitable for handspinning, and you may lose your enthusiasm for handspinning raw fleece if your first fleece is a bad one. Once fleece is carded its ready to use for felting, or spinning it into yarn. They are extremely heavy, and dark brown with dirt (keep in mind that it takes a sheep an entire year to grow their fleeces this long, and sheep don't take true baths besides being rained on). . This is what is meant by Greasy Fleece. Washing the fleece is the foundational step to a successful project. Meaning of raw wool. The fiber on an alpaca’s head between its ears; also called “top knot” and sometimes “bonnet.” Yield : The amount of clean fiber sheared from a particular alpaca; also a processing term relating to the percentage of clean fiber after washing out the natural grease and dirt and removing vegetable matter. If you use cloth bags, use a zip tie to secure the bag, then wrap the tie with tape. . Also shake well to remove any small second cuts. Some of the foreign substances in the raw wool can be removed simply by washing in water, but the grease sometimes requires a solvent such as soap. 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