A farewell to fleece (sort of)

I’m feeling guilty. Not (for once) because of the gap between posts, but because of a decision I have recently made. I’ve had enough. A straw has broken this camel’s back. Well, not so much a straw as chunks of gorse, miscellaneous pieces of dried vegetable matter, things I believe to be dried sheep shit, and – ergh – scurf. Lots and lots of scurf. Did I mention scurf?

It’s not the fault of sheep. I still like sheep, don’t get me wrong.

Let me explain. I’ve been an advocate here, repeatedly, and elsewhere, also repeatedly, for the use of fleeces in spinning. And particularly local fleeces. I have waxed lyrical on the subject of wool miles. I have been and chosen fleeces on the hoof. Hoof? Well, yes:

I’ll have that one, and that one, and how about that one? When they’re sheared, in six months… I’ve visited farms, learned about how one sheep ate the stock book, how another chased tourists begging for sandwiches, how another taught all her lambs how to squeeze under the gate on the lane by apparently making themselves two-dimensional. I always had respect for sheep (having early acquaintance with a feisty Scottish Blackface x Suffolk flock helped), and I have developed a deep respect for the history of their long association with humans. That hasn’t changed.

What has changed is the amount of time I am prepared to devote to this:

The appearance of flexible garden thugs – er, trugs, thank you, autocarrot – made an immense difference to my fleece washing days, but still… ergh. And there’s time and energy to be considered. Lots of both. Time, energy and a huge amount of splashing of sheep-shit-diluted water, that is.

And then there’s this:

The drying stage. Again, helped enormously by the purchase of two sweater-drying racks from eBay, and immeasurably by sunshine and a certain amount of wind. This is Wales. West Wales. Wind is not usually a problem… sunshine? Well, that depends.

But, if I ended up with something like this:

a Teeswater, otherwise known as the Golden Fleece, or this,

I was well pleased, and I still would be. However…

Sometimes I did not. Sometimes I ended up with a fleece which still had a lot of gorse, bracken, or moss. Fair enough, some of that’s my fault or a dodgy choice of fleece, and it largely comes out in the carding anyway. But that, recently, has not been the end of it. Every single fleece I have recently processed has been scurfy and full of second cuts. One – this should probably be behind a spoiler for the faint of heart and/or easily nauseated – was full of dead fleas. Bugs. Dead whatevers.

OK, free fleeces are always a risk. I learned that early on in my spinning career, with the free Zwartbles of Doom. Zwartbles have dark fleeces. This was was liberally sprinkled with white, quite a lot of which fell on the floor when I unrolled it. In fact, given just how much ended up decorating the floor, that fleece should have been clear. It was not. Scurf. Sheep dandruff. Compost bin. And the last few fleeces I’ve been working with harked back to this unpleasant start. Even though they’d not been free.

I recently pulled out a Jacob’s fleece I’d bought. Gigantic, nice and local, beautifully coloured, and I’d split the fleece into colours when I processed it. Should have looked more closely. This time the problem was lots of short second cuts (SUCH a badly-sheared fleece), and noils. These, for the uninitiated, are very, very short bits of fibre, tangled into small lumps. Sometimes they’re the result of bad carding, but this fleece hadn’t yet been carded – so they were down to weakness in the fleece. A ‘tender’ fleece.

I began working on it.

Gently. Sorting it, discarding the worst bits. Carding it, flicking noils out on the carder with a double-ended needle, and hoping most of the short cuts would fall out. (Many did – the mountain of crap accumulating underneath the carder was unbelievable.) I plugged on, determined to get some useable yarn out of this fleece. I’d paid good money for it, I knew its provenance, it was local, I was going to have enough for a jumper because it was just so huge. A colourwork jumper, given how careful I had been about keeping the differently coloured parts of the fleece separate.

No, I wasn’t.

I might get a hat. A smallish hat.

That’s it. That’s all that was useable. It will improve with washing, but it sure as hell won’t increase in quantity.

And that is most definitely it. Producing this small amount took a ridiculous amount of time, a hell of a lot of energy, and almost all the interesting swear words I could make up.

So from now on I am going to be buying roving. Single breed undyed roving is comparatively easy to find, and not that expensive. Not at all expensive when you consider the time, energy, scurf, bracken, spines of gorse and need to invent expressions like pissdongle, flangewhacker and spadwallet. Dear sheep, I still love your fleeces. Honestly, I do. But, in the balancing wool miles against the keeping-my-sanity stakes, I’m coming down on the side of sanity. Or what passes for it.

(And it’s not just sheep. Alpaca. Mites. Ergh.)

Summer fun. No, really.

It’s been a busy summer. Nothing wrong with that; what with work and trying to stop the garden from turning into the Gobi Desert, I’ve been rushed off my feet. It was quite a relief to find myself spending three weeks with friends in a craft pop-up in Harlech. In the building behind the bunting.

(It was once a library, but one non-visitor announced loudly ‘I’m not going in there, it smells of old chapels’. A: no, it doesn’t, and B: what had terrified him so much about old chapels? The writer in me nearly dashed out and asked.)

I always take my spinning wheel, a good reference book on sheep, and some samples of differently coloured fleece. If nothing else, it gives me something else to do when we’re quiet (knitting all the time would just lead to more hand trouble, must vary my craft, must vary my craft, must… you get the picture).

So many people are fascinated by the process, and most of them have never seen anyone spinning before, though I did – to our mutual surprise – encounter another Louet user, a delightful Dutch visitor. The fleeces are particularly fascinating to children (so soft, and they are all washed, of course), and thrilled a couple from Chicago who had been wondering what ‘all the small black animals in the fields were’. Zwartbles, often, now, but some are Black Welsh Mountains. If I’d spent my life in Chicago I’d not expect black sheep, either. Lake-effect snow, yes; getting your scarf frozen to your face in the few blocks between where you are staying and the Art Institute where you’re working, yes; seeing commuters skiing in the street, yes. Black sheep, no, not necessarily.

But I don’t necessarily spin fleece, though. It’s the idea of prepping it; I’d never have enough for a day’s spinning – part of a day spinning, ahem – without prepping it on site, as it were, and the thought of what a determined  nine-year-old boy could do to his younger brother with a drum carder makes my blood run cold. They’re bad enough with an unsupervised spinning wheel. So I take fluff. And this year I had some mystery fluff (I’d inherited it) which turned out to be Wingham’s cashmere and silk blend. All 700g of it. Spun like a dream, too.

As you might expect. Sigh. Plied wonderfully as well.

Now, of course, the question is what to knit with it. I intended to keep it DK weight, but it turned out more 4 ply or sport weight equivalent; it wanted to be fine. I had also intended to dye it, possibly with madder, but I’m loving the natural cream’n’gleam effect of the undyed fibre. I can feel a shawl coming on.

When I’ve finished the sweater on the needles at the mo. And the other shawl on the other needles. Oh yes, and when I’ve finished spinning the last 100g.

Book review: Yarnitecture

I’m often sent books to review, and I find myself thinking ‘nooooo’. Many don’t make it onto Woolwinding; they are either inappropriate or just uninspiring, or maybe they are reinventing a wheel which doesn’t need redevelopment – or maybe they are just dire. But sometimes I open a parcel and find myself doing a little dance round the room. This is one of the latter occasions.

Excuse me. Ahem.

What can I say about this gem by Jillian Moreno? it is a spinning book written, hooray, from a knitter’s perspective. It focuses on spinning ‘a yarn that fulfils a purpose’: one that works its best for whatever knitted project you have in mind.

Once upon a recent time, handspinning was almost an end in itself, and it still can be, of course. Once upon a recent time, it was assumed in books about spinning that the spinners were inevitably dealing exclusively with fleece. Raw fleece. Fleece possibly from their own sheep. And, also of course, some people do work exclusively with fleece (I love it myself, except on days like today when the wind suddenly gets up and blows most of my freshly washed Cheviot x BFL fleece away, possibly taking it as far as England). But many of us are not purists: we buy prepared fibre, maybe hand-dyed, delicious fibre; maybe undyed but fully processed and still delicious fibre. And some people – I know several – actively dislike working with anything else. Very many of us spin fibre in order to knit with it, to produce something unique, something we control from (almost) start to finish. This is our book.

It starts with a basic vision; goes through fibre breeds and the impact choice there can have; explores prep, drafting, plying, working with colour, finishing… and, ta dah, knitting with handspun. It’s beautifully illustrated. And it even has some patterns.

Ok, let’s have a look inside. Take this page: it illustrates the different effects you can get by blending colours at plying or blending those colours before spinning:

It is often good to do things intentionally, instead of accidentally. Intentional, and you can get the same effect again, should you want to do so. Accidental? You might be lucky…

Or take finishing a spun yarn. I almost always whack my finished yarn to set the twist (I find it helpful; I can imagine I am whacking the person at the Fibre Fair who said ‘I could do that, but I wouldn’t want to, it’s so boring’). But what about the alternatives? There’s snapping, swirling it around like a cowboy with a lasso, even fulling it. What difference would a different process make, and what impact would it have on a particular yarn?

Here four different yarns are compared – merino, corriedale, BFL and silk – after having undergone eight different approaches (menaced, incidentally, doesn’t mean you sitting in front of the yarn like Michael Corleone confronting the men who tried to kill his father; it means felting it deliberately).

And how about ply affecting what you want to knit?

That’s covered at length; above focuses on singles, but there are equally detailed examinations of two- and three-ply yarns. It’s excellent, and the ‘knitting with your handspun’ section is invaluable, covering things like ensuring you will have enough yarn (been there), and simply planning a project from a pattern which specifies a commercial yarn.

Finally, there are twelve patterns. There are two cardigans, a moebius cowl / shawl, four more varied but normally constructed shawls (of which this, by Romi, is one),

socks, two sweaters, a necklace and a pair of mitts.

I have been waiting for a book like this – thank you, Jill Moreno!

 

Spin it!

There’s this thing, you see. It’s this big cycling race thing. This insane thing called the Tour de France, to which I am slightly addicted. And then there’s this other insane thing: the Tour de Fleece. Really.

It’s a Ravelry thing, and I joined it last year but got swept up by the spinny equivalent of the voiture balai, the broom wagon, and had to give up as my hands didn’t let me carry on. Not this year. This year I may not be wearing a spotty jersey, a green jersey or a yellow one (I am, in fact, wearing a black polo-neck as the weather is pretending it’s October), but I am spinning or plying every day:

I’m doing at least 30 minutes every morning, before work, while my porridge is cooking and cooling (yup, it’s porridge weather; should be croissants or a tartine but I need something warming).

Right, so what is the Tour de Fleece?

Apologies if you already know, or indeed if you are already participating… essentially it’s a challenge for spinners. You spin every day the Tour riders ride; you can have rest days as the Tour does – there are two – and you can also do something especially demanding on the challenge days, if you wish. You can join one of the main Rav teams, or you can join what’s known as a ‘wildcard’ team, and some of them are pretty wild. You share what you’ve done, either just with your team or on the various stage posts in the Tour de Fleece group. It can be really inspiring, and really motivating, and if you’re stuck with your spinning, it’s a great way to get going again.

I needed, for instance, to press on with the lovely Haunui I’ve got. Judging by the current weather – my heating has clicked on; this is JULY, for heaven’s sake – my need for the big sweater replacement will hit sooner rather than later, so I need to stop being distracted by colour. I’ve got about 900g which needs spinning up now, and though I know it won’t all get done before the Tour ends, I will be able to make a serious dent in it. First two bobbins of my Tour:

which, after taking things carefully for once (I swear I can feel the voiture balai behind me after last year), turned into these:

Spinning a consistent yarn for a garment is interesting – I think I’m getting there; I’ve got my little sample tied to the wheel, and keep stopping to pull the thread back on itself to see what it will look like when plied. Of course, if I’d taken better notes in a Guild workshop on ‘spinning to the crimp’ I’d probably have a better, more methodical way of doing it – but then again, maybe I wouldn’t: the workshop presumed you’d know the fleece in its unwashed state. Anyway, it is a thickish DK or a fine Aran, in most places – sport weight, in fact. Yup, I’m sharing the passion, as the poster says. Only not the unpleasant habits (really – my last year TdF, with details, ergh).

And the Tour rides on. In glorious weather. Hrrumpf. Wouldn’t mind sharing a bit of that.

Three for the bookshelf?

Right, that’s it. No more long projects until at least September. I know I suffer from Freelance Disorder – a tendency to accept any job you are offered, on the grounds that it might be the last job you are offered – but I’ve got a summer full of craft pop-ups and fairs and I do not want to be nailed down in front of the laptop. And while I’ve been bogged down in editing books, I’ve also been sent some to review. But these are on woolly matters.

The first, Cable Left, Cable Right by Judith Durant, is a real winner. As it happened, it landed on my doorstep as I was doing some cabling (fingerless mitts, for sale), so the timing couldn’t have been more appropriate.

I do have stitch pattern books which include cables along with other things, generally. But I don’t have anything which purely concentrates on cables apart from one book which also has patterns for garments. In that book the cable patterns are often very elaborate and on a large scale; here there are everything from the simplest rope cables to elaborate banded cables in two colours. Like the other books in this series (which I also rate), this does not include any patterns for finished things – and that, to my mind, is an asset. First, I often don’t like the patterns for the garments / cushions / strange unidentifiable things which come with the selection of stitch patterns; second, just concentrating on the the stitch patterns gives much more depth.

It allows you to look at the basics clearly and in more detail,

and to then understand things properly when you get to more complicated issues:

And that highlights another point. This book uses charts, not written instructions. Writing these instructions out would have taken pages; the chart is clear and quick. And in case anyone isn’t used to charts for cables (I am one who generally prefers written instructions), there are full and clear directions, and plenty of help. I think I’m converted.

(Someone said to me that she had problems working out which row she was on with charts. I looked at her pattern – written out, complex cables – and she was using a clip-on ruler thingy as a marker. I use something like that for lace charts, which I’m perfectly comfortable with, so why not these? I am a convert.) Yup. A definite recommendation, as is the next one.

Just a quickie; a little book on spinning, How to Spin, by Beth Smith.

It’s basic, it’s clear, it’s not photographic but there are line drawings to clarify things from basic drafting and attaching fibre to the leader to other issues like making a woollen-style join. Beth Smith is the author of The Spinners’ Book of Fleece, and both knows her stuff and has the ability to explain what she’s talking about. I recently sold a wheel to someone who was completely new to spinning, and I wish I’d had a copy of this at the time (it’s OK, she’s near a mutual friend who’s a very good spinner, so she’ll get help there). But this would be very useful for anyone in that position – and I’ve found it useful myself!

Ah yes, the third book. I nearly didn’t review this, but patterns are a matter of personal taste. Also, I do not crochet. But had I ever felt like crocheting – and I might, given that there are some amazing crochet patterns and projects out there to inspire me – then the Crochet One-Skein Wonders for Babies book would put me right off. Incidentally, it had the same effect on some of the expert crocheters who saw it, too.

This elephant is cute, I’ll give it that. And there are a couple of hats and some bootees that I like. And, of course it comes down to the question I raised right at the start, of personal taste in patterns. But a diaper cover with a flower decoration on the bum? A vest which is quite rightly described as ‘unforgettable’? The Zucchini sleep sack and cap? Yup, it’s a bag shaped like a courgette in which you stick your baby.

Ok, there are some nice blankets; if you’re into crochet baby blankets, then it might be worth having a serious look at this. But the majority of the patterns look so old-fashioned beside some of the things people are crocheting now, and many of them are deeply impractical (and frightening, in the case of the more surreal toys). This book tries hard to be cute (‘little bottoms’), but maybe it just isn’t one for the somewhat cynical British market. Or the somewhat cynical me.

A lesson learned?

Hm. A lesson learned is a a lesson which will probably be forgotten. But maybe not, who can tell?

I am now in the first period without a scary work deadline or three that I have had since, oh, September last year. I don’t want the Freelance Gods to think I’m complaining, because I’m not, but it has been a bit hairy in parts. To start the days off and to try and keep some sort of perspective, I decided to work on my spinning for a minimum of half an hour each day as well.

My hands are a whole lot better, but my spinning was not: too out of practice. So I settled down, spun a few small quantities of fluff I had in my stash and then, when I felt confident that things had indeed improved, I settled down to a big project. Replacing the giant sweater.

Anyone who knows me in the real, as opposed to the virtual, world also knows that during winters I am seldom seen without this huge, snuggly, comforting, impossible-to-photograph garment. I love it, and it loves me back. To such an extent that it has even been injured in the course of its duties (and let me just say that it’s a good job it’s reversible).

I know, I thought, I’ve got a shedload of Haunui fibre that I bought from Winghams a million years ago (2013); I’ll use that. It’s gorgeous, soft, soft, soft; lovely natural dark-chocolate colour, and the sheep – specific to one farm on New Zealand’s South Island – are bred and farmed to give a wonderful fibre for spinning. And, boy, is it wonderful; really, really special.

Went to spare room aka stash store, dug out fibre, smooshed it considerably, then spun up and plied 200g at roughly worsted weight (that’s it, above). Nice. Went back to stash, got out next 200g, realised only had about 500g left. Not enough.

Called Winghams. They’re not carrying it any more. Called friend. She is no friend at all and refused to give up her stash, for some reason. Huh. Asked on Ravelry if anyone much nicer had any they were willing to part with; they didn’t. Lots of helpful people did refer me to a UK importer who is even relatively local, but she imports finer fibre, and I needed to match what I’d got. Then, out of the Ravelry blue, I was contacted by the wonderful people on the farm. That’s right: all the way from a remote farm on one side of the world to a remote (no, it isn’t, except according to various couriers) village on the other. A few deliberations, some discussion of whether a complete match could be made (it could), whether the economics would work out, given carriage and duty (they would, especially after another friend who also failed to buy enough became involved), and we were on.

Soon a parcel arrived (after more discussions, this side of the world, about delivery times and exactly where they were going and no, they couldn’t rely on their sat nav and no, there wasn’t a house number and yes, they had been here before). It was surprisingly small, but bound about with lots of tape. I managed, very carefully, to cut the tape and it began to expand…

So I carried it to the bench and allowed it do do its thing:

and finally revealed two kilos of the most wonderful fibre:

I know what I’m going to be doing for the next few weeks!

And the next time I think I might be spinning for a garment, I’ll do some advance planning, honestly I will. Really. Oh yes, and I’m not buying any fibre at Wonderwool Wales tomorrow. Nothing. Dim (byd). Rud. Rien. Niente. Nowt. I have enough fibre now, and by next winter I might just have a new big sweater.

Massive thanks to Fiona and John at Taranui Farm; to their postman and to the delivery man at this end, who didn’t bat an eyelid when I came over all excited about receiving a parcel full of fleece. It’s been a real pleasure.

The continuing story of a sweater…

Way, way back in the early days of this blog (it’s nearly five), I wrote a post about a much-beloved sweater. Days are getting gradually colder – and so is my neck – and  thoughts turn to big, cuddly, and above all warm, knitwear. Actually, I don’t think mine ever really turn away. I like big sweaters. What am I saying? I love big sweaters.

The sweater in question has long since joined the big woolly cloud in the sky – or rather been transformed into the stuffing for a draught excluder. It developed holes. Some holes can be mended, and this one had already been reknitted from the wrists up,

but other repairs are impossible. One friend suggested patches, but withdrew the suggestion after I pointed out that if I added tassels to the patches I’d be able to pass as a somewhat unusual form of exotic dancer. One in a big sweater. With patches as well as tassels. Myself, I couldn’t see the sweater working with towering platform soles, big hair and a g-string, but I guess there are all sorts of – um, points of view – out there.

That perfect sweater had been knitted in wool from – sob – the defunct Hunters mill in Brora, bought in 1998 but not knitted up until 2005. It was incredibly warm (there’d been a lot of lanolin in the wool when I washed it out in the croft kitchen, which caused a bit of an, er, argument, and I think some of it remained, though given the state of the sink I cannot think how). It was a great substitute for a coat. The colours in the tweedy yarn allowed me to accessorise it with almost anything, though generally that meant walking boots – when it didn’t mean wellies.

I knew I wanted to replace it, so my first attempt was in wool from New Lanark, bought at Wonderwool Wales. Lovely colour – red – but made me look like a corpse. I guess the red had too much blue in it, really. And I wasn’t that impressed by the wool either; it tended to go a bit thick and thin and I actually felted it slightly to correct that. So it’s been sold.

Still needed a replacement.

Life moved on, and I found myself standing in Jamieson’s Lerwick shop on my trip to Shetland four years ago. Wool was calling to me, delicious wool, green wool. Bought it, knitted it up into a replacement for the Sweater.

And it’s lovely. But it’s not for me. Not quite sure why, mind: it’s warm, the colour suits me, it reminds me of Shetland. But it may be the design; there’s just something about it that doesn’t really suit me any more, and I’ve not changed that much. Or maybe it’s the combination of colour and design, or maybe it’s just the fact that it means I’d be wearing a whole garment in – shhhh – colour.

Still needed a replacement.

I turned to some more Jamieson’s wool, this time bought at Jamieson’s Mill in Sandness from a giant cardboard box with ‘£2 a ball’ written on it (well, you just HAVE to). Chunky, though, and in black. Well, in Mirrie Dancers:

But I was radical – I chose another design. By now I was messing with designs instead of following patterns obediently, and I messed with Erika Knight’s Felted Sweater, adjusting the sleeves so they had at least some shaping, and reworking it so I could use my wool at the best tension.

I love it. I live in it, and it’s just come out again – it’s like seeing an old friend. Again, it’s so warm, it’s so wonderful, and I wear it constantly. But this time I’m doing some scenario planning (sorry; I’m writing a business book at the moment). Or maybe – shudder – that should be succession planning?

In yet another move charting my changing history with wool, I’ve seen the sheep. I’ve chosen the fleece. I’ve washed the fleece:

and it’s ready to spin (Gotland x Black Welsh Mountain – great colour, great lustre, quite a short staple, for all you spinners out there). I’m not quite ready to spin it, mind – I’ve got the the end of a Manx Loaghtan and a Teeswater (spinning up beautifully) to get through. But I think my big sweater will do another couple of winters. Fingers crossed!

I find the whole thing fascinating – how one garment can chart seventeen years. From skeins drying outside a croft in Sutherland, to my very first visit to Wonderwool Wales, to Shetland, to a farm in North Wales with Gotland sheep running around the place being pointed at by a couple of spinners – ‘Can I have that one? And that one? How about that one? When are you shearing?’. And it charts skills too: from following a pattern (and having to borrow my first ever circular needle from a neighbour so I could pick up the neck bands) to adapting patterns and then spinning the wool. And I’d not realised, either, that all the wool was British, or – to come over all Nicola Sturgeon – largely Scottish. Oh, I know that the New Lanark red was probably from the Falklands, but at lest it was New Lanark.

If I wanted to come over all anthropological, I could talk about signifiers and objects carrying meaning, but let’s not go there. It’s bad enough that I talked about succession planning…

 

Intermissione… is that a word?

In any language? Probably not, but this is one. Ar hintermission. I will get back on the decision I made about Fair Isle colours, but for the moment I am frantically trying to finish an editing job. Well, I need the work to pay for more wool, sillie billies!

(And food. And bills. That sort of thing.)

And, for variety, I’ve entered the Tour de Fleece. Yes, there is such a thing – if you don’t know already – and the idea is to set yourself a spinning challenge and spin your wheel each day the riders of the Tour de France spin theirs (only – happily – wearing lycra, pissing in your pants, and not just pissing*, is not involved).

It’s been ages since I could spin properly, and I seem to have lost the knack. Time to get it back. So I’m allowed to spin for ten minutes a day – twenty if my hands behave – and no more. The aim was to use a chocolate-brown Manx Loaghtan fleece I’ve had kicking around since pre-hand-injury days. I got it out, I prepped it, it was disgusting, I put most of it in the compost.

Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t that I’d left it unwashed for three years. That would be an ERGH almost comparable with what happens to some of the Tour riders when they get caught short. But it was full of second cuts and straw and scurf and it was not pleasant. So I’m using what I prepped before I became too nauseated by sheep dandruff, and am going to ply it together with some white Lleyn which is much, much nicer.

Except with all the typing I now need to rest my hands again, and with root canal work I also need massive painkillers (I love dentists). Never mind, it will get done – and I’m much heartened by my progress. On all fronts!

*Really. Croyez-moi. I’m a bit of Tour nerd – and ERGH. Double ERGH. Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to cycle behind some people.

Book review: The Spinner’s Book of Fleece

I suppose it’s highly appropriate, really, that I should get a copy of this book by Beth Smith just at the right time. It’s the right time because I’m celebrating the return of summer – or summer’s last flourish, perhaps – by washing fleece. Up to my arms in sheepy water while also baking bread and working. You’ve got to make the most of the weather at this time of year, and in my book that means washing the fleece of the biggest Lleyn lamb on the surface of the planet. Heaven only knows how large the animal was; or maybe it was tiny, but in a huge fleece.

I already have the magisterial Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, which I use a lot, so I wasn’t entirely sure what Beth Smith’s book would add. The answer was detail, and for me that’s extremely useful. It doesn’t have the same range of breeds as the F&FSB, but then it doesn’t intend to. This book looks at how to get your fibre choices right, and for me that’s vital: I’m a sloppy spinner and could do with being a whole lot more considered.

I could also have done with this double-page spread before I sorted my Lleyn. (It took me ages to work out – once unrolled on the lawn, and once Next Door’s Cat had been removed from it – that I was actually looking at it sideways, but I digress.)

Smith looks at twenty-one different breeds (as she says, ‘my choices were also determined by what breeds were available to me’). My first reaction, a hasty one, was that there were too many which I was unlikely to encounter, living this side of the Atlantic. In fact, there are probably only three or four – Polypay, American Karakul, California Red – and, the spinning world being what it is, I could doubtless get hold of some to sample if I wished to do so.

However, to some extent the breeds don’t matter: what matters is the categorisation. Let me quote again: ‘You don’t have to spin the actual breeds I am talking about. You can compare the characteristics of the fleece you have to a similar breed covered here and feel confident that you can successfully work with it using a similar approach.’

Fleeces are divided into four basic types. These are fine wools (Merino, for instance), longwools like BFL and Wensleydale, downs and down-type breeds (that pensive Black Welsh Mountain fits in here) and multicoated breeds like Shetlands. There’s also a catch-all ‘other breeds’ group, which includes Jacob.

Each is treated differently for the best effect, and there’s a good basic introduction to sorting and scouring, too. There’s some coverage of tools and terminology which is good for people who are newish spinners or just plain lazy (that would be me), and there’s a very useful part on buying a fleece. Note the ‘buying’: free fleeces, as I have learned, are usually free for a reason…

I’d not really thought about what I wanted to do with a fleece before I spun it; I just spun it. But look at these two illustrations from the part about spinning for lace knitting:

They’ve been spun in the same way, and the pattern is also the same. On the left is a Lincoln, a longwool, and on the right a Suffolk, a down. I’d just thought of lace spinning as spinning very finely, not particularly in terms of exploiting the characteristics of – or even considering – a particular type of fleece. Dur.

And then there’s the processing, even down to using different washing techniques for different types to achieve the best results (my ‘shove it in very hot water with green Fairy Liquid and wait until the flies go away’ method doesn’t feature, surprisingly, though it is remarkably similar to her ‘bulk washing process’ for longwools). My Lleyn – though it doesn’t feature either – is, I think, almost a mixture between a down-type and a longwool (the staple length is great, and there’s good crimp), so I think I’m doing the right thing so far.

As a down-type, she recommends carding – hand- or drum-carding – something like a Lleyn; if I were to treat it as a longwool, she would prefer me to use combs. That’s tough, because I’ve not got combs – but when I see the difference they make, I think I ought to invest in some even though I am currently swearing that I will never, ever process a raw fleece again.

But of course I will. Look, for instance, at the appearance of these two BWM samples (definitely a down type, so there are no hard and fast rules). They’re both beautiful, but the bottom one has been combed. Plus I’ve a Teeswater waiting for processing and, boy, is that a longwool.

So, what do I think, overall?

Well, I think This book is a worthwhile addition to any spinner’s library and, for new spinners, the sections on fleece prep are invaluable. I wish I’d had something like this when I first got up to my elbows in fleece straight off the (mucky) sheep’s back. I relied on telephone calls to friends, blog posts from other spinners, and an old book – a very good old book, but one without illustrations apart from a small line drawing of a fleece which looked nothing like the skanky object I’d just unrolled in the garden. As it is for me now, The Spinner’s Book of Fleece will persuade me to be a whole lot more thoughtful about how I choose and prepare fleece. It may also cost me a large amount of money, because of course I now need a set of wool combs. Of course I do.

And back to sheep

I think I’ve got my woolly mojo back. The garden is – um – vaguely tamed; the hands are a bit better; a cardigan is still not sewn up but it’s not cold enough to worry about that… yes, I think I have. It is strange, the way you hit a slack patch sometimes. It can last for ages, but at least I knew what was causing mine. Too much research. It’s the coloured sheep thing. It’s fascinating. No, it is.

Time to get away from books and academic papers and people talking about the whys and wherefores and history and rationale of coloured sheep – and actually meet some.

Through various contacts (friend > cousin > cousin’s husband) I spent part of last Monday surrounded by some extremely beautiful sheep and lambs. They were Gotlands or Gotland crosses, with the occasional ewe of another breed for the cross. Like this rather nattily dreadlocked Cotswold lady,

whom I could not resist photographing (you should see her run; her dreadlocks fly around madly but laughing meant I couldn’t hold the camera steady). Anyway, I think she’s chic and I want my hair like that.

Ahem.

The fleeces are absolutely beautiful. I’d encountered Gotland fleece before so I knew what to expect, plus I’d read, for instance, that it was fine Gotland wool which was used to make the Elvish cloaks in the Lord of the Rings movies, fleece from the Stanborough flock in New Zealand. But fondling some at Wonderwool and dealing with a sheared fleece are one thing. Running your fingers through the most perfect, silky, curly, lustrous fleece on a friendly ram lamb’s back is another.

The ram lambs are less nervous than the ewes, and one spent some time leaning against my fellow spinner like a medium-sized dog while she stroked and patted him. But we were there not just there to admire the flock, but to choose some fleeces – literally on the hoof.

Oh, the choice, the choice:

Gotland sheep naturally come in a range of colours – pale silvery grey/fawn to almost black – plus this flock also include some interesting crosses. I have already had a couple of Gotland x Black Welsh Mountain fleeces from them, and I wanted another, but when I was faced by this embarrassment of riches, I went a bit bonkers. Essentially, I wanted the lot.

No. No way.

The farmer has a lovely new Gotland ram (even the rams are friendly – well, friendly and, er,  enthusiastic, ahem, to varying degrees), and that should have an interesting impact on the range of fleeces next year. The variability can be quite surprising, even so, and these two lambs eyeing each other up prior to a little light head butting are actually twins…

which must make lambing time even more interesting. What are you going to get? Who knows…  and of course the presence of the crosses gives even more variety. Some crosses are being bred out, though; the Shetland strain is being reduced, for instance (horns are an issue – get them under something and you can do exciting things like lift gates off their hinges and get at the ewes when you shouldn’t, waaa hey).

Gotlands are a Swedish sheep originally, and owe their delicious colours to the fact that the modern breed was developed there from a primitive sheep, the Goth (aka Gutefår). Primitive sheep, early sheep, whatever you want to call them, are dark in colour; the cream or white fleece which many people think is the ‘normal sheep colour’ is actually a result of selective breeding. Goth sheep are generally dark, but they are also very variable – light and dark grey, even piebald (see above image, perhaps, for traces of this coming through), some with white bellies, some even with tan fibres in the fleeces.

Apparently there’s a legend in Sweden that the original Goth sheep actually came from the Black Sea area after Viking raids, but that’s as maybe. These Gotlands come from North Wales and I was not there to buy fleeces from the entire flock. I mean, there are seventy-five, and that’s a bit much even for me. Fortunately the ewes had been shorn and their fleeces sold at Woolfest.

I was only looking for one, a really black one, a Gotland x Black Welsh Mountain. That’s him, above, dressed, as it were. But somehow I seem to have ordered a couple more. At least it’s only two. And they are all going to be off the animals as well, which I think is very restrained. The neighbours already think I’m mad, but having a small flock of Gotlands in the garden would probably not go down well. And it would just add another level of distraction…