CHAPTER 1

CHOICE OF FIBRES

CHOOSING FIBRE TO SPIN

The UK has over sixty individual sheep breeds, more than any other country. When you add to that number of breeds from Europe that have become popular here for cross-breeding on large commercial farms, and all those crosses too, we could be talking of hundreds of sheep types, with many different characteristics. Most breeds fall into broad categories like mountain and hill, longwool and lustre, or downland. These different categories can cover either wool characteristics or the areas where these types of sheep thrive. For instance, sheep in the longwool and lustre category (which we will look at in more depth in Chapter 8) have just that: long, lustrous and often wavy wool. This type of fleece is perfect for creating worsted yarns, which are smooth, hardwearing and dense. At the coarser end of the scale, they make good furnishing fabric; at the finer end, high-class worsted suiting. Mountain and hill breeds will often have long, tapered, hairy wool that will shed rain. Some have shorter, softer fibres underneath to insulate them from the cold - fleece in this category is often classed as carpet wool. The downland breeds have shorter wool and the fibres have a crisp texture and a lovely elasticity, perfect for woollen spinning, which we will explore later. There are of course dozens more in between that are classed as either fine or medium, which will be perfect for all manner of knitwear.

I'm unsure of the breed here, but what I would like to comment on is the sheep's role in shaping our countryside. For many hundreds of years we have been a nation of sheep farmers, and the wealth of many English counties was built on the revenue from selling fleece or finished cloth to Europe. It is said that funds to build many of the large stone churches, cathedrals and monasteries came directly from sheep farming, and in fact monastic communities were major landowners with some of the largest flocks. Woods and forests were gradually cleared to make way for more grazing and the quintessential pattern of small villages with a gently rolling patchwork of fields was the result. Just think, chocolate box England wouldn't exist if it weren't for sheep!

The Greyface Dartmoor is a very rare breed, but there is a small flock in our local area. Being generally thought of as a carpet breed, I think they were originally part of the pool of fibre that went into West Country carpet making. Now that the industry is in decline there isn't so much demand for the wool, so the breed is in decline too. Maybe not for the beginner, but if you want to make furnishing fabric, rugs or bags, then why not try a fleece. As with some of the other coarser breeds, a shearling fleece might just be soft enough for a hardwearing jacket or boot socks.

As you can see, we are extremely lucky to have all this variety to choose from in British sheep breeds. The range of breeds you can get hold of will vary from area to area but I really do encourage you to go out and hunt down a fleece to learn to spin. If you are outside the UK, then investigate what your country has to offer. They will be different from our breeds here, but they will be just as good and probably very varied.

DESCRIBING WOOL

There are several terms used in describing wool that you might not have come across before. I'm going to explain a few here, so that you can follow along with me. Firstly, a sheep grows wool continuously throughout its life, from anything between about 1.5 and 12in per year (3-30cm). For the animal's welfare, if nothing else, it needs to get a haircut at least once a year. The wool is shorn off by a trained shearer, usually with electric clippers these days. A well-trained shearer will handle the animal firmly but gently so it doesn't get stressed or hurt in any way. The wool of most breeds will come off as one cohesive mat of fibre called a fleece. If the shearing is being done on a large commercial farm, the bundle of fleece will be tossed, together with many others, into a giant sack and sent to British Wool (formerly the British Wool Marketing Board), to be sold to a mill. If, instead, it is being done on a small farm that specialises in rare or minority breeds and sells some of their wool to handspinners, a little more care is taken and each individual fleece will be carefully rolled, tied and bagged. (We hope, although that doesn't always happen!)

So now we have a fleece, let's look a little more closely. You will find that a fleece is made up of many individual tufts of wool packed tightly together. These are known as staples or locks. The word lock is used most often, but the word staple is used when we are measuring the length of the tuft. We refer to the fleece as a whole as having, say, a 6in (15cm) staple length. Each of those locks will have two ends: the tip, which was the outside of the fleece and the butt end, which is the end that was just cut to take the fleece off. If it comes from a young sheep having its first haircut, then those tips will be pointed, and possibly have a slight curl; they will be the fibre that the lamb was born with and which has grown out. If it is an adult sheep in its second year, then the tip will be quite blunt, as it has been shorn once already. If a lamb is shorn at a few months old it will have a very short fleece, which will be much shorter than the average for its breed and is known as lambswool. If, on the other hand, the lamb is being kept for breeding, it might not be shorn until it is a year old or just over; in this case it is referred to as a shearling and its fleece will be longer than normal for that breed.

These days, hill sheep tend to be part of large commercial flocks and will be farmed mainly for meat rather than fibre. Most of the wool goes straight to British Wool, probably to be sold on as part of a carpet wool blend. If you do get chance to try a hill fleece, then I can recommend a shearling Black Welsh Mountain. I had one once. It wasn't harsh at all and must be about the darkest fleece available in the UK. Of course there is a whole knitting yarn industry built around Shetland fleece, which is a hill breed too!

If we look closer still, we will see that each tuft is made up of many individual wool fibres, which run along the length from butt to tip. These fibres can be just slightly wavy or gently curled, or a mass of tiny zig-zag waves that we call crimp. The wavy or curled locks will hang limply and create yarn that hangs and drapes well. The zig-zag crimped locks will stand up on their own and create yarn with bounce and elasticity. There are, of course, lots of other crimp styles between these two extremes. This is part of the reason wool is so versatile and has so many different uses.

CHOOSING A FLEECE AND WHAT TO LOOK FOR

The following is a checklist of problems to look out for when inspecting a fleece that is for sale. If the seller won't allow you to unroll the fleece and inspect it, then don't buy from them. If you are forced to buy on the Internet, then try to get recommendations from people you know who have used the seller's fleece before, and ask the seller for several photographs.

When buying in person, to get an overall view of the quality, you need to test the fleece in three or four places and watch out for the following problems. Please be very careful as you take your samples. Hold the tip of a lock in one hand, and with the other hand hold the rest of the surrounding locks down firmly to the ground or table, then pull sharply on the lock so that it comes away cleanly and disturbs the surrounding fibres as little as possible. If we want to persuade sellers that we need to be allowed to investigate the quality of the fleece before buying, then we in turn need to take care that, if we decide not to buy, we haven't spoilt the fleece for future customers.

Lock waisting/narrowing

If you hold an individual lock up to the light and see a thinning of the fibres anywhere in the length of the lock, then that shows up a problem. The likely cause is that the sheep that provided the fleece has been ill at some point since the last shearing. When the sheep is ill it can take away some of the nutrients that go into producing healthy fleece, a little like us getting brittle hair or nails if we have had a serious illness. Sometimes this can occur in just a small part of the fleece, but if it is widespread then maybe you should bypass that fleece.

HEALTHY AND WAISTED LOCKS

Left: a sound, healthy lock with a gradual taper towards the tip. Right: a waisted lock. This lock narrows drastically about half way along the lock, denoting an illness of some kind during the year's growth. When tested, this lock will most likely be weak and break apart at the narrow point. Both halves of the lock may still be useable if otherwise sound, but you have to decide if it will be worth the extra effort involved to pull every lock apart before processing.

Soundness

This is related to the above problem. Take a lock of the fleece, hold it firmly at both ends and holding it near your ear, pull sharply and listen for the sound the lock makes. If it is a musical twang, then you have a healthy lock; if there are any crackling sounds (fibres snapping) and/or the fleece comes apart between your hands, then it is probably suffering from a weakness as already mentioned. If you get the same result in three or four areas of the fleece, there is a problem and it will affect what you can do with the fleece. If the break is near the butt or tip, and you have a nice useable portion left, then it might be...