Jacob Fleece- Follow The Process Part Four

Here is the finished sample of Jacob, which over the past months I have endeav0ured to share with you the process of working the freshly shorn fleece into a beautiful knitting yarn ready to use. So far I have told you how I washed, carded and handspun the fibres (please read previous posts) and now I show you how I make a skein, wash and ball up the yarn ready to knit.




I unload the bobbin from my spinning wheel and wind the wool onto my niddy noddy.
This is a really useful tool as it enables me to make the wool into a skien.



When all the yarn is loaded up, I loosely tie the skein in four places and then slip the yarn off the niddy noddy and twist the long looped skein to stop it tangling.

For Yarn Finish the skein is then washed in hot soapy water, rinsed in clear water and left to dry without tension so as it can develop it's loft and elasticity. It becomes bouncier, shorter and wonderfully soft.

It is now ready to make into a ball of knitting yarn.

I have a wool winder for this task. It is important that it is not too tightly wound into a ball as you want to keep the softness and bounce of the wool. I usually store my handspun yarn in skeins and only " ball up" when I'm ready to use it.

I am pleased with the result with this sample, I do like the effect of spinning dark fibres and pale fibres seperately and then plying them together into a yarn. It will be interesting to see it knitted up.

However I think I prefer spinning the blacks and browns into skeins and keeping the creams and whites for knitting up in their natural colour tones and keeping some back for when I have another go at hand dyeing some yarn.