Skip to main content

One Worth Telling - Part II

Before I move forward on the wool processing there needs to be a bit more information about the rabbit hole I went down searching for information regarding the sheep-goats.  Those who spin like to know the breed of sheep the fleece comes from to better spin it.  No one knew much about the breed of sheep so I contacted the local university extension animal husbandry person with the before and after photos from yesterdayś post to see if he could tell me anything.  I am still waiting for an answer but then I might have been asking an impossible question.  Photos are not very helpful when trying to determine a breed, I spent hours looking at images of different breeds with no luck in finding anything that looked like Daisy and Oreo.  Then my nephew shared that the sheep were a St. Croix breed.  (Perhaps I should have started there!)

Note the ewe´s coat

You can find more photos of St. Croix sheep, both the bearded rams and the ewes, on this website.  Finally the long, narrow faced sheep I had been searching to find, but the St. Croix are hair sheep meaning they lose hair and are not sheared nor generate wool.  Now I was confused.  How do we get from one sheep and one goat to the two whose wool I am processing.

There was some searching to find out this info.  Sheep have fewer chromosomes than goats so natural breeding often leads to still-born lambs, but some do survive.  A lab process where the two are combined genetically yields a lower mortality rate.  As I read more about the crossing of the two species I got way out of my realm to understand the science, so I asked my son who is trained in genetics to help me.  Ask this scientist something he is interested in and one can get a lot of useful information.  Here is an example of the type of detail he could offer (thankfully he does a great job of dumbing down that science for me)


So he helped me understand that Daisy and Oreo are more than likely a natural cross between a sheep and goat that did survive and then one or both of their parents or grandparents were again crossed (back crossed) with another sheep, a breed that generates wool rather than hair.  In the end I really do not know much more about the breed of sheep I am spinning the wool from than when I started, but I have learned a few things about genetics.  The wool is usable and that´s about all I need to know.

Picking wool means the staples (threads) are pulled apart to allow vegetable matter to fall out and the fleece is fluffed during the process.   It is a simple task, can be tedious and requires tenacity to do the volume we have but Mom loves it.  Sheś the one nudging me to join her each day the weather permits.

Mom picking


Our picked fleece

As Mom picks the raw wool I hand card it.  Here are some photographic images to help with the explanation.  

Only one of the two carders being cleared


A brown paper bag full of fluffy rolags

A more tightly wound set of rolags

Using two hand carders, one holding the wool and the other pulling it, creates a very fluffy white batt that can be rolled into rolags (small pieces of fleece where the staples are all lined up).  These rolags make for easy spinning.  Look how very white the prepared wool becomes.  Is every piece of vegetable matter removed at this point?  Not quite, the spinning process further pulls the fibers apart and any remaining vm falls away.  Mom does a very good job even with altered vision due to cataract surgery.

The more tightly rolled rolags were an experiment to see if these more dense babies improved spinning.  The results for me with this wool is it did not.  The staples are long and seemed to become tangled so the fluffy rolags are what I am exclusively producing now.

With the carding complete, spinning could begin.  The picture of the picked wool reveals to those in the know some problems that I will talk about in Part III.  It will involve neps and noils.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time.  One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock.  So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep.  Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot.  And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms.  (BTW
2 comments
Read more

Ode to the Cat

It has been six months since Mike, the cat's, passing.  I think of him every day and miss him especially when Paul is away.  Mike was a being in the house with me and we were close.  Grieving his death has been muddled with my Dad's passing and sometimes I feel guilty about that happening.  As time passes the ache becomes less hurtful for both and I am starting to get mostly good memories in its place. Recently I helped celebrate Pablo Neruda's birthday with Jami, my poet and overall very creative friend.  Guests were asked to select one poem written by Neruda to read to the small group who gathered for the celebration.  I picked this one: Ode To The Cat -- Pablo Neruda There was something wrong with the animals: their tails were too long, and they had unfortunate heads. Then they started coming together, little by little fitting together to make a landscape, developing birthmarks, grace, flight. But the cat, only the cat turned out finished, and
1 comment
Read more

Knitting-Related Guinness World Records

I had to share some of the Guinness World Records connected with knitting.  It is amazing to me the type of skill, stamina and unique characteristics these record holders have in common. How about trying to knit with these SPNs?? Ingrid Wagner and her large needles and knitted swatch The largest knitting needles measured 3.5 m (11 ft 5.8 in) long and had a diameter of 8 cm (3.15 in). Ingrid Wagner, a rug and art creation artist, from the UK used the needles to knit a tension square of ten stitches by ten rows at the Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, on March, 10 2008.  (And I complained about getting certain SPNs stuck in my clothes.)  See how this swatch was done with merely 5 people managing the needles.  And what about the yarn?  It is truly ex-bulky.  It looks like they're knitting in a warehouse, but with a wingspan of almost 24 feet or 7 m, you'd need all that space.  Or how about the longest piece of finger knitting that measured 4,321.4 m
Post a Comment
Read more