WEEK 3 - PROCESSING WOOL

The raw wool has arrived!

My initial thoughts were mixed, I was excited yet worried as I had expectations of how blackface sheep’s raw fleece would be. I learned from my research that the breed lives on harsh Scottish terrains, meaning there is commonly a lot of vegetative debris and matted first usually seen on the fleece. It was very dirty, and some areas were most likely unusable. I cut a section from the top of the fleece- an area where less dirt would be as the lower half tends to have more. at this point I could only use my sink to begin cleaning, in future I would do this outside in a bucket as it was very dirty.

The process of cleaning the wool Is very delicate, it is very easy to agitate the wool which results in it becoming felted which would make it hard to brush out. I let the wool sit in the sink filled with boiling water with a touch of dish soap, as this is less harsh on the wool compared to other cleaning products. This processed was repeated 3 times, being left to soak 1 hour each time.

The wool at this point seemed a lot cleaner and looked whiter, but some areas od dirt still lingered. I cut off the stubborn bits of vegetation and dirt, and was left with a clean, white piece of wool. Wool absorbs a lot of water, so I put it through a gentle tumbler in the washing machine to remove excess water. The results were great and surprising, it looked bight white and completely clean with no smell.

I took it into class the next day to begin the next step of processing, which was brushing it to achieve a fluffy texture that can be processed into yarn. It was a very fun experience as I got many classmates to come over and help brush the wool. I spent the whole day brushing out the wool to begin the spinning process the next day using the electric spinner.

I had some issues with starting the spinning as it the yarn would not wrap onto the bobbin. It took a few hours of trial and error until it eventually began to work- the tension needed to be tighter, and the yarn needed to be wrapped more on the bobbin. The process of spinning the wool took all day, it took a lot of time to learn what pace worked best and how much wool to feed through. I started to use small amounts of water to help keep the wool tight, I learned this from doing a previous flax project. By the end of the day, I had already started to see a difference in the yarn, it looked more even, and I was able to build up speed.

This was a slow week due to the process itself being ‘slow’. It was frustrating at times due to the lengths it looks to create the yarn, but it was very rewarding when I saw the final product of the yarn itself. This week was very much centred on researching and processing, my plans for next week are to knit with my yarn and to begin doing swatches of natural dyes to eventually begin dyeing my yarns.