Flax from seed to shuttle

Since taking up weaving, I've had the opportunity to explore fibres I have never really enjoyed working with as a knitter. I've been using my tahkli and charkha to spin up loads of cotton (fantastic mindless spinning - when you can get in the groove, it's magic) and I've now started to become interested in flax/linen.

It's funny that two different plant fibres can be so dramatically different - where cotton is short, flax is incredibly long. Where cotton is soft and insubstantial, flax is unbreakably strong (really, it will cut your fingers before it will break). And while the cotton plant flourishes in hot sunny weather, flax is comfortable in the cool and cloudy climes of northern Europe.

This last point is what inspired me to order a flax starter kit from Flaxland. I tried to grow cotton last year, but it didn't work very well in always-overcast England. The Flaxland kit allows me to try out every stage of turning flax to linen, from growing to processing to yarn.

The kit really has everything - it is an excellent value! It contained:
- A packet of fibre flax seeds
- A booklet on the history of flax
- Some scutched fibre ready to be hackled/combed, enough to last me quite some time
- A 'breaker/hackle' - essentially a block of wood with teeth carved on one end :) a simple tool but effective!
- A metal comb for finer combing after hackling
- A face mask, as processing flax gets dusty
- A spindle - kind of a boat anchor, but it has these charming markings noting the traditional direction for spinning wool (clockwise / Z twist) vs flax (counterclockwise / S twist)
- A set of spools and a kind of mini-lazy-kate to ply off of
- Even some ribbon for dressing a distaff!

I tossed down some of the seeds in an empty patch in my garden (densely, so that the plants will compete with each other for the sun and grow nice and tall). They are doing well so far:

Who knows if they will make it to the end of the season, and if they do, if I will be able to successfully complete the long and involved process of turning it into fibre - but either way, I am having a fun time of it!

As for the linen I've spun? I warped up some cotton on the loom and am weaving some small towels in a mix of cotton and linen threads. I'll let you have a look when I've finished.

~Joyuna

Open Letter to Wensleydale Sheep

Dear Wensleydale,

I'm sorry if I've ever said bad things about longwools in the past. I didn't understand you back them. You don't act like the wool I'm used to, and I was prejudiced, and I regret that. You are really something special.


Before, I didn't understand what to do with you. But now I recognize your true beauty. Combed out into little nests, spun fine, something magical happens. It's like if wool and silk and mohair had a baby together. Lustrous and sleek, and no, not an all-rounder, not good for every project, but more of a specialized fiber. And I feel like I've finally hit your sweet spot, and it's glorious.


Plus, you're like the Komondor dog of sheep.

Odelay!
(source)
~Joyuna

The most beautiful fleece (is the one you have)

I think I need to set higher standards for my fleece-buying, because at this rate I'll be filling up the flat in no time. The trouble is, every time I find a fleece I like, it automatically becomes ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏsᴛ ʙᴇᴀᴜᴛɪғᴜʟ ғʟᴇᴇᴄᴇ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ.

However, I really think this one just might be the most beautiful fleece. The most beautiful fleece I have, anyway.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Buying fleece on eBay is a gamble. (Never trust a listing where the only picture is of the sheep in a field ;) However, as with all gambles - sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you hit the jackpot.

I've won before, and I've lost, and this time I think I hit the jackpot...!

It's a rooed black lamb's fleece, Shetland x Jacob cross. I thought it would be nice, but not this nice! It is soft as a little black cloud. Shetland fleece can be very fine but it can also vary a lot, and Jacob has a reputation for being quite a 'strong' wool - but this is absolutely next-to-the-skin soft and cuddly. Fantastic crimp too, to say nothing of that gorgeous almost-black, dark-chocolate color.

The whole thing is only 450g, and it will wash up to less than that after I remove the lanolin and other gunk. It's quite clean, with just a little veggie matter, but pretty darn greasy. It's just gorgeous.

A rooed fleece is not shorn - instead the fleece is pulled right off the animal as it sheds it naturally. Only certain breeds of sheep can be rooed, mainly primitive breeds, Shetland being one of them. Not all Shetlands will roo though, and some won't and then all of a sudden one year they will, or only on certain parts of their body... it's complicated. A rooed fleece is something of a rarity.

Rooed fleece is different from shorn fleece in a couple of ways: For one, it eliminates the problem of the 'rise', or a weak spot in the fleece where it would have been shed, which can be an issue in Shetland fleeces (LongdrawJames has a good video about this).
A disadvantage of a rooed fleece occurs at the butt of the lock - skin flakes. You can see them in the above photo. Apparently it's not the same as scurf, which are like sheepy dandruff flakes that are present throughout the staple - these flakes are just at the end. The flakes are just a fact of life for rooed fleece, as I understand. I asked around and you can just snip them off, or I found that flicking the lock got rid of them too.

What am I going to make with this beautiful fleece? Not sure yet. Something luxurious. I've done some small samples and swatches but I haven't quite decided yet.
Some of my samples: On the left woollen-spun, and on the right worsted-spun, both 3-ply yarns. The woollen was spun long-draw from carded rolags, which results in a lighter, loftier yarn. The worsted was spun short-draw from hand-combed top, resulting in a smoother, denser yarn. They're each good for different things and each nice in their own way. Combing got rid of a lot of little bits of veggie matter that carding didn't, so I'm considering a hybrid rather than pure worsted or woollen - spinning woollen-style from combed top, for a loftier yarn without the VM.

Right now I'm less worrying about what I'll end up making with it, and more just enjoying the experience of handling this heavenly soft wool. (It makes me want to cry when I meet people who think all wool is itchy...)

~Joyuna

Combs!

Finally, finally, I got my combs. It felt like a big purchase (though when you think about it, it's the same as just a few big orders of yarn or fiber), but I really wanted them so I saved up and they're here!

They're Valkyrie Extra Fine Minis, from The Whorl's End. When I opened the box, I was delighted to see that it was padded with wool :) Donna keeps some mule (BFL cross) sheep, and this fleece is long and shiny, so that's probably what it is. It makes perfect combing practice!

What to do with the fleece? There's a fair amount of it, certainly enough for a little project. It's pretty soft and shiny. The fleece is aesthetically lovely, with those long curls and that pearly sheen. I think it will make lovely, lustrous lace.

The little nests are coming off my combs as fast as I can produce them. It's a little addictive, turning locks into perfect-looking top. It's definitely more productive and a better result than my previous ersatz method.

I'm dizzing off the combs with a seashell I found on the beach in Devon - which already had a hole in the center. The broken edges of the shell were smoothed down by the sea. The diz is so easy to use with these super-long locks!
The diz hole is about 1.5cm or 1/2 inch in diameter, which makes for quite thick top (the fiber fluffs out a LOT after you pull it through that little hole!). In the future I'll look for a smaller hole - but, the rounded shape is just perfect for funneling the fiber through.

I've tried combing some of my fleece stash, and everything has turned out great. It was tough deciding which combs to get - Valkyrie offer Fine, Extrafine, Superfine, and Viking combs (larger combs for medium to coarse fibers). I like to work with a variety of fibers but favor the finer side, and I think the Extrafines were a good choice for me.

This is some Gotland I've been stashing away - previously I've been spinning it from the lock, which has turned out well, but the fleece has some color variations. When each lock was a slightly different shade from the next, it would spin up into a sort of subtle striping. For the project I have planned I wanted a more consistent look - it was easy to blend the lighter and darker fibers together on the combs.

~Joyuna

Meeting the Wiltshire Horn

Last weekend I took a short holiday, and on the way back home we visited the National Trust property Stourhead. It's a fantastic old estate with a beautiful garden and lovely house, made even more intriguing by the fact that people are still living in it today!

One thing that caught my attention as we were walking around was a pen of sheep. Actually, from afar we thought they were goats, because they were all horned and the ones we noticed first had short hair. Upon closer inspection though, yes, sheep!

The fences and bushes around their enclosure were scattered with chunks of wool. Likewise, some of the sheep appeared to have rather patchy coats, and some were missing entirely. How curious, I thought to myself. Why are these sheep shedding?
It turns out, it's completely natural. These are Wiltshire Horn sheep, right in the middle of the yearly shedding of their coat. They're a hair breed of sheep, kept for meat or for grazing. The shedding is intentional - they're marketed as an easy-care breed, in an age where sadly the cost and effort of shearing isn't always worth the price of the wool. It's not a new breed, though - its lineage can be traced back hundreds of years.

He seemed nice enough, despite all the bleating - maybe he wasn't keen on me pinching his wool?
I couldn't help myself but grab a handful of the wool littering the area - it would have been left to the birds, or the compost heap, otherwise. It's freegan crafting! It looked decently woolly - crimpy, full of lanolin, and not too harsh. Short, absolutely, and full of veggie matter, but it was wool. Wool picked off of fences doesn't tend to retain its lock structure too well, but I did pick out a lock to show off its length (or lack thereof):

That's just barely reaching 4cm.
I looked in the FFSB - Wiltshire Horn is mentioned, in a short section on hair sheep, but not any information. Was it spinnable? Well, I would have to see.

First thing, I washed the fleece, to remove at least some of the lanolin, suint, and who knows what else that was on it. Then, I carded it into thin little rolags.

These rolags (so small, more like punis) spun long-draw beautifully.


I was left with this sweet little skein of yarn - textured, with its share of kemp, but really no scratchier than a lot of proper wool-bearing sheep, and really not a lot of trouble to spin despite its length. Let's face it, while it's very short for a wool, compared to camel or vicuna, it was a cakewalk. What can I say - I like my bouncy wools, and I liked spinning this!


~Joyuna

One fleece, Three ways

Recently I got a kilo of shearling Romney fleece from Pippajo123 on eBay (recommended!). eBay can be a gamble when it comes to fiber, but I've been lucky and gotten some great stuff, and this fleece is no exception. Lustrous, long, fine, and a lovely crimp too. Before this I wouldn't have described longwools as 'versatile' - but I'm spinning this fleece in three different ways.

The majority of the fleece is getting spun worsted style into a DK/light worsted 2-ply yarn, tightly plied. This yarn has the best of both worlds - luster and bounce.

I'm hoping I will end up with enough yardage for a vest (I will probably dye the yarn before knitting). I've knit up a tiny swatch and I really like the fabric it's making.

Next, I took some dark grey mohair and blended it into the Romney, and I'm spinning this (chain-ply on the fly) into some sock yarn.
The mohair and wool don't draft together evenly, so this will actually knit up stripey as well as heathery.

Finally, I've given some locks the individual hand washing treatment and flicked them out into beautiful smooth handfuls. I'm spinning this finely into a gorgeous lace yarn. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm really excited about it.

Basically, this fleece can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. I wasn't even sure if I was going to love it, when I made the purchase - I mostly favor the springy bouncy wools. But this stuff is just divine. It definitely warrants a different kind of spinning than a downs breed - namely All Worsted, All the Time. I did spin up a little sample in a more woolen draw... It just took all the magic out of the yarn. It definitely wasn't what this wool wanted to be. So, I obeyed the wool, and am spinning it all strictly worsted to bring out the gorgeous pearly shine of these locks.

~Joyuna

Experiments with Combing

I need some wool combs.
I tried combing for the first time at the workshop in Ringwood, and I really liked the result. I've often had trouble spinning evenly from rolags - the results can be OK, but I end up with lumpy yarn. My preferred method of fleece prep up until now has been flicking and spinning from the lock, which works really well unless your fleece has variations (in length, or texture, or color) - then one length of yarn can be very different from the next one.

In the grand scheme of things, a set of combs is not that expensive, especially when I can tell I would get good use out of them. Still, a quality pair of combs is an investment and would wipe out my fiber budget for the month, so I need to save up before I plunge in.

Still, I'm not very patient. And some Romney fleece arrived at my doorstep - long, lustrous, and quite crimpy too. So I decided to experiment with what I had around the house and make some ersatz combs.

Two plastic hair picks, the kind you can get for cheap at your local drug store. They're not sharp, not sturdy, and not particularly ergonomic. They don't hold much fiber. But, they'll do for an experiment. And as you can see, they worked! I managed to produce a ball of fluffy, smooth, spinnable top from my Romney locks. Hair picks are to wool combs as dog slicker brushes are to hand cards - not the best way to do things (they don't hold much, not very durable, not designed for the job) - but a way to experiment and try it out without a big investment.

Fuelled with excitement, I did a few more samples. OK, actually a lot more samples...

(Right to left: Suri alpaca, huacaya alpaca, Oxford Down, Wensleydale, Aland, Bowmont, and Romney spun both thick and fine)
Yep, I loved the results. The smooth texture, the sheen, the evenness I was able to achieve, the way I can comb bit after bit and roll them into one big ball of top, rather than flicking out each lock separately.

I'll be able to be much more productive once I get my proper combs - but these experiments have been really fun and enlightening too.

~Joyuna

Waste not, Want not

I've been working through a bag of Bowmont fleece recently - it's heavenly stuff, soft as merino with good crimp and an absurdly long staple length. I'm finding it ideal for very fine spinning - I flick open each lock and spin it for 15-20 minutes before moving on to the next.

Using this method, I've ended up with some waste fiber - short cuts and neps, the usual waste, but also just clumps of fiber without good lock definition unsuitable for this spinning method or that came out while I was flicking the locks. I'm loath to throw out perfectly good fiber - so I put these bits aside into a little pile.

I carded my motley assortment of fiber into rolags and began spinning. They weren't perfectly smooth or uniform, and neither was my spinning, but I didn't worry too much. I took these singles and used the bracelet method to wind them on themselves once, and then again. Then, I plied my little ball of yarn.
The resulting yarn ended up soft and round, reasonably smooth, and with lots of character. Each ply is a bit thick-and-thin, but when plied together the inconsistencies meld into each other.
The 4 plies create a really round yarn which is just beautiful, and hopefully durable too. The only disadvantage to 4-plied yarn? It is a lot of spinning, even for a tiny amount. My little skein of Bowmont is a scant 55 yards - enough for the project I'm planning, but even this much seemed to take forever.

~Joyuna

More Exceptional American Sheep

Tunis may be my one true love, but I found plenty of other interesting sheep in Ringwood. Two that particularly stood out to me were Polypay and Santa Cruz.

Polypay

Polypay is a lovely sheep with a funny name. I hadn't heard of these guys before taking the class, but I was very pleased to find out about them. The breed was developed as an all-purpose sheep that excels at multiple births - thus increasing a farmer's profits (Poly - many, pay - money: get it?).
Polypay are a mix of Finn, Dorset, Targhee and Rambouillet. The fleece has a crisp feeling, with not much of the softness you would expect from the Targhee & Rambouillet ancestry, but it's not scratchy either, just a bit 'crunchy'.
It spins into a great lofty yarn - this sample is spun woollen from flicked locks. I would love to make a nice cushy (but still sturdy) sweater from this stuff. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get ahold of more Polypay in the future, but I will be looking into their ancestor the Dorset.

Santa Cruz

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Tunis! We Meet Again at Last

This is a story of being reunited with my one true love.

At the beginning of the month, I participated in an American breeds spinning workshop. It was amazing, and I got to try a whole slew of new sheep breeds, many of wish I'd really been wanting to try - and one I tried before, once.

Oh, Tunis. A wool unlike any other.

Back when I got my little tiny spindle, back when I first got the idea of a fiber sampler, I received a small sample of Tunis. By small, I mean small - it was only a handful, and I spun it into 9 yards of the bounciest, most beautiful yarn I had ever seen.

Sure, there are others that are bouncy - many finewools are. I even discovered a British breed that almost captures its unbelievable spring (Kerry Hill) - but not quite.

We finally met again, that fateful Saturday, this time in the form of washed fleece.

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American Breeds Study with Beth Smith

Last weekend I went down to the town of Ringwood in Hampshire to participate in a spinning class, led by Beth Smith of The Spinning Loft. She's US-based, so for her trip across the pond, one of the workshops she offered was an American breeds study.

You might say, "Joy, you're American, shouldn't you already be familiar with American breeds?" Well, actually no - because before I moved to the UK two years ago, I wasn't particularly interested in sheep breeds. I mean, I knew there was a difference between BFL and Merino and all the other "scratchy stuff". I had a vague idea that some wools were bouncy, some wools were shiny, some rough - but no real understanding.

Since undertaking my fiber sampler project, I have learned so incredibly much about the diversity of sheep - and I still have more to learn! It has taken me places I never expected - from preparing raw fleece, to exploring rare sheep both fine and coarse - and many of the sheep I expected to be coarse were actually surprisingly soft, too!

Up until now I've focused on fibers that were easy to source in the UK, so trying a whole bunch of American breeds was a real treat. I got to sample a number of breeds I've really wanted to try, and I came home with a bag full of wool! Not to mention all the wonderful spinners I got to meet - everyone was lovely and we had a grand time (though I could have happily gone the rest of my life without hearing the phrase 'wool pubes' ;).

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Happy Wovember!

This month has been dubbed Wovember. The Wovember project is all about celebrating sheep's wool, and clearing up misconceptions. Here in the UK, most people call any kind of yarn 'wool' - be it cotton, or acrylic, or anything. Shops use the term 'wool' as a marketing tool to take the positive associations of wool fiber - warmth, wicking properties, and so on - and apply them to other things that aren't wool at all. The Wovember website has a Hall of Shame set up for shops which are marketing their items as 'wool' or 'woolly', when in fact they have no wool content at all.

There's also a Wovember photo competition, judged by Jamieson & Smith. The theme is '100% Wool'. Here's my contribution, which I title 'The Rainbow'.

It's 10 different breeds of wool, all in natural colors, all handspun by me - part of my Fiber Sampler project. I love the diversity of natural colors of sheep - from the shiny, silvery grey of Gotland to the nearly pure white of Shetland, to the rich brown of Manx Loaghtan. Both the Gotland (silvery grey) and colored Ryeland (dark brownish grey) I prepped myself from fleeces.

Not only are the natural colors different, but the textures are drastically different - from the shiny, wiry longwools like Lincoln and Gotland to the softer, springy Merino and Corriedale. People think 'wool' is just one entity, but each breed has its own unique properties. There is not just one 'wool', there are dozens! All of them have different feels, different properties - not all wool is itchy; some is lusciously soft. Not all wool is elastic; some is shiny and drapey. There's a whole world of wool, which most people have no idea about. So celebrate Wovember and get the word out about wonderful wool!

~Joyuna

Prepping my first fleece

At Knit Nation I picked up a half-kilo of Gotland fleece from Well Manor Farm. I've never worked with sheep's fleece before, and I used to swear I wouldn't. I've worked with alpaca fleece and loved it, but sheep fleece has a couple major differences from alpaca: first, sheep are generally dirtier animals than alpacas are. An alpaca fleece may be dusty, and have a little bit of veggie matter in it, but sheep fleeces contain all sorts of muck.

Secondly, sheep's fleece has lanolin, a grease that lubricates the wool and keeps it from felting on the sheep. You may be familiar with lanolin from skincare products, as it is beneficial for the skin. But, it also gets everywhere else and, if you leave a sheep fleece for too long, the lanolin will begin to harden and the fleece will be unusable unless you can soften it again. Some fleece is spun 'in the grease', but most of the time a sheep's fleece will need to be scoured, washed of all its lanolin before you work with it.

With my alpaca fleeces, I've just spun basically straight off the animal -- taking a handful of fiber and carding it or flicking open the locks open. Sheep fleece takes a little bit more prep. So, I was a little bit hesitant about the fleece. I spread it all out in my shower for sorting...

Keep in mind this is only 500g of fleece. A full fleece would be about 3kg!

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