Human here: today I’m preparing some raw wool sheered straight off the sheep so I can use it for felting and spinning etc. Conestoga Chuck has a tendency to stuff his nose in the bag of raw wool occasionally to get a good sniff and so I have to watch or before I know it he has some wool out playing with it! Lol
The first step is washing the wool, then it has to be combed and carded and made into nice clean wool roving. I’m fortunate enough to have some excellent friends at the local Hutterite colony that raise sheep and were kind enough to save a bit for me when it was time for sheering last spring. I have the best friends ever!
This is a sumptuous black wool. I’m not sure of the breed of sheep etc but it’s super soft and fluffy! Here is what it looks like before washing. We just store it in a trash bag until I need some and have time to wash it, because it does take a few days to wash, dry, comb and then card all that wool! There is a bit of white mixed in that I will use for a different project on a different day but you can really see how the white isn’t really white until it gets washed. Its more of an orangey mankey brown dirty color. It’s much harder to tell with the black wool lol. The little bits you see in the black wool is hay mostly.
I place a small amount of the raw wool in a bucket (or you can use the bathtub, the bucket just saves on hot water consumption) with a small amount of laundry detergent and let it soak for about 20 minutes. Drain and repeat till the water is clear then rinse/soak a couple times just to make sure the soap is out. The trick is not to agitate the wool like in a washing machine. No scrubbing or wringing it… just let it soak. Try not to let the running water agitate it either. When wool gets moved about in the agitation process it becomes felt. And felt can NOT be combed and carded. So be gentle and resist to urge to scrub. Multiple gentle soakings will do the trick. Use a net bag if you like, just to make sure it doesn’t get felted.
Raw wool is super dirty. Sheep produce a waxy substance called lanolin which makes lots of stuff stick to their fur like a magnet. Dirt, dust, grime… but also hay, straw, and the occasional small ball of sheep dung. So as the wool is soaking I gently try to remove the pieces of detritus that I can see. The rest will come out during the combing and carding. It’s harder to work with black wool than white because with white you can see the bits and pieces easier. So have a trash can handy lol.
Lanolin is used in many hand creams BTW, so working with raw wool and wool in general (that has been home washed and not commercially prepared) has the added benefit of giving you super soft hands without having to pay for expensive hand lotion!
This is the first soak for this small batch which will make a tremendous and surprising amount of wool roving once combed and carded. You can see how dirty the water is. You want to get the water as hot as possible to aid in melting the waxy lanolin off the fur too. I wonder how the commercial hand lotion people harvest the lanolin for their hand lotions? Hmmmmm…
Be prepared to scrub your bathtub afterwards because this part gets a bit messy lol. But it’s sorta cool and satisfying to watch the water go from super gross to nice and clean after about 3 wash and 3 rinse soaks. So be patient this takes a while to do. I usually let each soak rest for about 20 minutes before I go back and change the water out. In between soaks, I usually do some household chores or if I’m feeling lazy some knitting (I’m knitting a hat today for a friend).
I’m sorta excited to get this lovely black wool because I plan to make a wet felted top hat with it… among other projects. So my friends have no clue how happy they made me by sharing this bag of wool they sheered! Like a kid on Christmas Day! Isn’t it amazing how the small things in life are treasured the most? Yes I get super excited when someone gives me a huge bag of dirty raw wool lol so I must remember to return the favor and make them something super nice from it as well 🙂 maybe a nice warm knitted hat for those cold Montana winters out on the sheep ranch?
Since this will take a few days to process I’m going to switch photos to some white wool I have already washed and processed a few weeks ago so you can see what it looks like before and after being combed and carded. When I got this wool it was an orangey brown manky dirt color. After a couple washes, rinses, hanging on the laundry line in the sun to dry (sunlight also helps to whiten) it looks like this:
Sonja was the name of the sheep this wool came from. This is Navajo churo wool. After I combed and carded it… it turns into fluffy white roving ready to be spun into yarn or felted into hats, or woven into rugs or whatever I decided the project of the day is going to be. SO MUCH POTENTIAL!!! Sometimes it’s hard for me to decide what to make next! All that potential for lovely things to be made from one small bag of dirty wool. Amazing! I’m hoping my friend with the llamas will remember me come spring when she goes to sheer because not only is wool awesome! But alpaca and llama fur is so heavenly soft I love to work with those! I need to make friends with an alpaca rancher next lol. I’d love to try camel fur, bison fur, rabbit fur etc. too 🙂
Hmmmmm Conestoga Chuck better watch out! If I ever run out of wool supplies he will get the best brushing of his life so I can see how dog fur spins into yarn! Lol (he just gave me a dirty look for that comment giggle giggle) …lil bit has no worries because her fur is so short it’s practically non existent. Lil bit just giggled at Conestoga Chuck and I swear she stuck out her tongue at him! I better go referee the children… and change the water in the wool soaking bucket. Later~
Conestoga Chuck 