Two different types of washed fleece.
The shorter fleece is Leicester Longwool
The long fluffy fleece is Scottish Blackface Wool
Every knitter, crocheter, or any other lover of the fiber arts,
is well acquainted with the yarn section of their favorite crafty
super center. Most of us take the neatly wound, gemstone colored,
skeins for granted as one of the many things corporate America
offers. But, did you ever stop to wonder where that gray ball
of luscious sock weight Merino wool blend came from?
It was not so long ago that there weren't any towering factories spitting out perfect bundles of yarn and looms full of fabric. Before the industrial age, people still had to clothe themselves, so they made their own fabrics. The women of the household spent every spare minute sitting at the loom weaving airy cotton fabrics, crocheting snuggly sweaters, or knitting up warm socks. If they ran out of yarn, there was no "Michaels," "JoAnns," or even *gasp* "Walmart!" They had to sit at their wheel, or with their drop spindle, and make their own.
Now, usually when I have this conversation with someone, their response is: "What do you mean 'make their own?' Well, anyway, it couldn't have been that hard. They would just take long hairs and twist them and then they have yarn! Right?" Well, yes and no. That is the basic idea, but there is a lot more to it than that.
Before we had bustling cities and suburbs to populate, we were a farm people. Most families had livestock that they would raise for milk, meat, and fleece (no, I am not talking about the fleece that you buy at craft stores sold on bolts that you make the cute tied blankets out of, mom!) to spin and make yarn. If a household did not have their own flock of fiber yielding animals and, say, raised chickens instead, they could trade eggs and what-not for bags of wool.
Getting the fleeces was just the beginning though. Now, the complete fleece, which if sheared correctly, would usually come off in one big piece, needed to be skirted and washed. Skirting refers to the process of picking through the fleece and removing any vegetable matter, usually called VM, any "second cuts," meaning where the shearer went over a spot twice and the fiber is shorter than in other areas and has both ends cut, and waste, being exactly what you are thinking.
There were as many different ways to wash a fleece as there were types of fleece available, but we will get into that in another article. For now, all you really need to know is it usually involved a tub of piping hot water and a detergent. The fleece would be submerged in the water/detergent mixture and left to sit until the water cooled. Being naturally buoyant, the wool would float to the top of the water, letting the dirt and debris settle on the bottom. Once the water was cool, the fleece would need to be fished out, the dirty water dumped and replaced, and the fleece washed again in the same fashion, over and over again until the water was clear. This was tricky business because if you agitated the fleece too much in the water, it would felt, meaning turn in to one big matted mess, and be ruined! When the fleece was sufficiently cleaned, it would be laid out in the sun to dry.
Next, the fleece would need to be prepared for spinning. If there was any dying to be done, it could be performed now, or after the yarn was finished. Usually, to make fiber suitable for spinning, it would need to be brushed out to make the locks fluffy. This could be done one of two ways: To make a soft, warm, fuzzy yarn, handcarders, which look like big dog paddle brushes, could be used. For a strong, smooth, worsted yarn, wool combs were the answer. We will get more in depth with both processes in another article.
Once the fiber was nice and fluffy, it was ready to be spun! The ways to spin these fibers together was endless, but the most popular forms were using a spinning wheel or a drop spindle, sometimes called a suspended spindle. The idea of both is to create just enough twist the make the fibers stick together instead of just fall apart when pulled on, but not so much twist that they kink up on themselves and make an uneven and super stiff yarn. This was accomplished working in small sections, building up the right amount of twist in one bit of fiber, then drafting, or pulling out more fiber from the bundle, and letting the twist move up into the new fiber. This was continued until there was a couple of feet of yarn created, which would then be wound onto a bobbin automatically, if on a wheel, or unhooked from the spindle and wound onto the shaft, if using a drop spindle. The process was repeated until the bobbin, or shaft, was full.
Once there were a couple of bobbins full of the same yarn, or balls wound off of the spindle, the yarn could be plied, if that was the desired effect. Plying is when two or more singles of yarn are spun together to make one stronger and thicker yarn. Most yarns were, and are, plied.
Setting the twist was a crucial step, but an easy one. If the twist was not set into the yarn, once tension was taken off of it, the twist, being built up kinetic energy, would run out and your yarn would fall apart. To set the twist, the yarn would need to be wrapped around something, the easiest being the straight back of a chair, to make a big tight loop. The ends of the loop were tied together using bits of leftover string to hold it all together. The makeshift skein was then submerged in warm water and left to sit for about ten minutes to make sure it was thoroughly soaked. The skein was then hung up to drip dry and sometimes weighted if it was not perfectly balanced and started to curl up on itself. As soon as that yarn was dry, it was ready to use!
I wrote this article in past tense, as though
no one does this anymore, but in fact, spinning is alive and well!
Many people are ditching the more modern ways of doing things
in favor of a more traditional life. Whether it be to live more
"green," a longing to feel more connected with our ancestors,
a hope to keep older traditions alive, a way to extend our craft,
or simply because it is fun, spinners are growing in numbers.
We are out there. We are many... And we want you to join us!
Welcome to your new addiction...
