I bought two Shetland fleeces from Stonehaven Farms in 2008. One was a steel grey fleece of an adult wether (castrated male) name “Polaris”. The other was this, a black lamb’s fleece from a ram-lamb called “Baltazar”.
VERY black with sun-kissed tips. Earlier this month I decided I was settled in enough in the new house to embark on a big project. I’m going to spin and knit “Irtfa’a“. Fleece to shawl. So, I got the fleece out of storage and attempted to roll it out in order to sort things a bit.
Oops…I forgot that Lois said this one was fragmented and picked through, so there’s no using one part of the fleece over another. No big deal, but I had an “uuh, what the ?!” moment.
If the shearing and skirting team know what they’re doing (and the fleece isn’t fragment like Baltazar’s), they’ll roll up the fleece into one piece and place it in to a leaf bag for storage. When you take it out of the bag and unroll it, it’ll look somewhat sheep-skin shaped, like this one (one of my Jacob ewe fleeces from this summer).
Anyway, I grabbed a big hand full and put the rest of the fleece away until I’m ready to process the rest.
I’ve taken to washing my locks in rolls of bridal tulle to keep lock formation. This works well when working with prime fleeces that you want to spin from the lock or comb. If you’re not too concerned about keeping lock structure intact, you can wash in mesh sweater bags. The latter method is good for when you want to pick & card the fleece.
I sorted out a few locks, then line’m up in a bit of tulle, and soak in cold water for up to 12 hours. I was very surprised to see the first cold soak water was VERY clean off of Baltazar’s fleece. Seems he didn’t roll in the NE Oregon dust as much as his buddy Polaris. One hot scour and two rinses later, I have very clean fluffy lock. I seemed to have forgotten to take a pick of the wool-tulle packets, but you can read about the whole process on this KnittySpin article. The author feature finewools in the article, but works just fine for other wool types, too.
There is noticeable grease in the rise, but it flicks out easily enough. I got my tiny little Greensleeves Ethan Jacob for spinning the first lock. Quick & dirty spinning, but I can tell right away this is going to be a very pleasant project.
I’m aiming for a heavy-ish laceweight (similar to Knit Picks Shadow in weight). I think this will work well.
Next step it to prep the rest of the washed locks and spin up a test skein on the Rose.
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