recipe for a sweater ~ part 3

step three: scour the wool

gather your supplies.



today i am scouring jericho's fleece. he is a shetland with beautiful charcoal colored wool.

shetland wool has a very soft fiber, ideal for sweaters.

after sorting out the unusable portions of the fleece, i place the wool in laundry bags. this makes it easier to manage as it is moved from wash tub to wash tub.

the wool is submerged in piping hot water with dissolved soap, either orvus livestock soap, or original dawn dish washing detergent (other brands do not effectively cut through the wool's lanolin). the temperature of the water should allow you to put your hands in it, but hot enough that you won't leave them there for long. the wool should be submerged gently, without any agitation, and soaked for 10 minutes or so. it is then moved into a fresh tub of soapy water for another soaking. next it goes through several tubs of rinse, soaking about 10 minutes with each step. the water in each tub should be the same temperature. agitation and a quick change in temperature can cause felting.

after you drain and gently squeeze as much as water out of the wool as you can, put the wool, still in the laundry bag into the washing machine and turn it on the spin cycle. you really should do two at a time so you can balance it. then the final drying time on the rack is very short, especially if you have a warm dry day. i bought this nice big drying rack at a yard sale. mark bought the screens i am using at another yard sale after he caught me taking our screens out of our windows to use on my drying rack. he loves to help me out like that! :o)

recipe for a sweater ~ part 2

step two: shear the sheep

roxie is looking a little nervous...she knows something is up.

once we catch roxie, the shearer buts her on her rump and she is completely resigned. but, oh the humiliation of it all!

and if she were honest with herself, she would admit that she is very thankful to lose that woolly coat for the summer.

our shearer does such a nice a job of taking the fleece in one complete piece with no second cuts. this makes my job of sorting out the best wool easier because i can determine which area of the sheep the wool comes from. the best wool comes from the shoulders and sides. underneath can become quite soiled and damaged.

stay tuned for part 3...

recipe for a sweater ~ part 1

step one: get a sheep...or a llama...or both. :o)

meeting amazon and roxie for the first time. "hey, whatcha got in that bucket?"

jericho, shetland wether

in 2005, we decided to add livestock to our little farm. so we bought several llamas and sheep. we searched the internet, library, and country friends for information about raising our new charges. and what a joy they turned out to be. they added an element of adventure to our family. we discovered that llamas have such a peculiar personality that always keeps us entertained! they do a good job of guarding our sheep from coyotes. we found our sheep to be so sweet, gentle and woolly! we also found that if you have sweet feed, a sheep will follow you anywhere.

our flock increased the very next month since both amazon, our cinnamon colored llama and roxie, our cheviot ewe were expecting. amazon gave us andes, an all white crea and roxie had a ram lamb that we named snowflake. with our growing flock i began to wonder what i would do with all that wool.

to be continued...