Posts from the ‘Spinning, Weaving, and Knitting’ Category
Shetland Sheep
Although the frontispiece to this blog indicates that we have been raising registered Shetland sheep since 1989 we haven’t yet taken much time to tell you about the breed.
The history of Shetland sheep goes back well over a thousand years to animals brought to the Shetland Islands by Vikings. Shetlands are fairly small in stature and possess many characteristics of landrace animals (those developed largely by adaptation to natural conditions rather than by selective breeding motivated by agriculturalists). Rams weigh 90-125 pounds and have magnificently spiraled horns; ewes weigh 75-100 pounds and are polled (without horns). They are fine-boned and their naturally short tails do not require docking. Shetland wool is fine; fleeces weigh 2 – 4 pounds and have a staple length of 2-5 inches. Shetland fleece comes in a wide variety of colors ranging from white, to shaela (silver), gray, moorit (brown), and black. There are eleven distinct wool colors and thirty described color patterns, many of which have become quite rare as white wool has historically commanded a better market. Shetland sheep are hardy, easy keepers, good mothers, and easy lambers. [The preceding was taken, in part, from the Oklahoma State University, Department of Animal Science.]
We chose to raise Shetland Sheep for a number of carefully considered reasons.
- We are both fairly small people and Shetland sheep are easy for us to handle. When compared to a Merino ram, for example, which may tip the scales at more than 200 pounds, a 100 pound Shetland is a much easier package to deal with. Animal transport, on the scale at which we operate, does not require a livestock trailer. We are able to truck animals about with only a pick-up rack of the sort manufactured by Sydell.
- Some have referred to the Shetland as a primitive or unimproved breed, meaning that it expresses many favorable, landrace, characters. In particular these animals thrive on what would be considered by many to be low-quality forage and they easily maintain body condition without feed supplementation. Shetland ewes twin reliably, and are good mothers that lamb easily on pasture (rather than in barns). They do well at temperature extremes – they do require shade in the summer and a place to harbor from cold rain. Like many animals these sheep do equally well in warm/wet and in cold/dry conditions – what they do not like is cold and wet. After more than two decades of selective breeding, our flock has developed a degree of natural resistance to intestinal parasites – however we routinely worm all of our animals once each year (at shearing). Shetlands have good, sturdy, feet which do not require excessive trimming.
- Shetlands are known to produce some of the very finest fleeces among the many sheep breeds. Because their wool grows in a number of natural colors Shetlands seemed a natural choice for folks like us with interests in both spinning and weaving.
- Yearlings make for excellent eating and dress well even when exclusively grass fed.
- And finally, we have raised Shetlands all of these years because they are a heritage breed listed by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy as recovering. NASSA (the North American Shetland Sheepbreeders Association) is their breed registry here in the United States. [The photo which accompanies this post shows Pairodox Samantha - a crossbred, yearling, ewe.]
Fleece 101
Once, when visiting friends, Joanna happened to be working on a knitting project that she had brought along. When the visit was nearly complete one of our hosts asked, “Joanna, what have you been doing all this time?” “I’m knitting a sweater,” she replied. Our host took out his wallet, handed Joanna a twenty-dollar bill, and said “Here … go and buy yourself a sweater.” To this day, she has neither forgotten the event nor forgiven the comment. Joanna has been knitting for more than 30 years, she has been a spinner for most of that time, and she raises wool in support of her art. There is great satisfaction in crafting your own clothes – entirely from materials that you have raised and processed. Wearing a sweater, hat, or perhaps a pair of socks that once grazed your back pasture is quite something. Doing this has been Joanna’s passion, it has been our shared passion, for nearly a quarter century.
We started shearing the flock this week … one of the yearly events that we both look forward to and dread. We look forward to harvesting new fleeces and to seeing what that crop yields; at the same time we do not relish the chaos which results and physical labor required to realize such a harvest. Because we have culled our flock intensively, the naturally colored fleeces which it now produces are of the highest quality. The subject of this post is fleece quality and how it is judged.
Fiber Diameter. Wool fibers are measured in microns (µm) (millionths of meters … one micron is equal to ~0.00004 inches) and may be identified by size classes which range from Fine (<17-22 µm) to Very Course (36-42 µm). For comparison, an average human hair may range in size from 50 – 100 µm. Fibers taken from one of our Shetland ewes ranged from Fine (18.75 µm) to Very Course (50.0 µm); the majority however were classified as Fine and Medium. Finer wool fibers may be spun into finer yarns which may be used to produce finer, lighter, more delicate articles of clothing or fabric.
Crimp. The term crimp refers to the waviness of the wool fibers which comprise the fleece. Do you remember, from high school physics class, the meaning of the terms wavelength, frequency, and period? Wavelength is the distance between wave crests, frequency is the number of waves per unit time (or distance or length, in the case of wool crimp), and period is time (or distance or length) per wave cycle. In terms of wool, good crimp translates to waves of high frequency (many per unit length) and low period (minimal distance per wave cycle). Good crimp allows for good loft, or lightness, openness, or fluffiness of the yarn which results. Yarns with lots of loft are soft and comfortable to have next to the skin.
Together, fiber diameter and crimp are important measures. Wool fibers that are finely crimped and of small diameter can be spun into finer yarns. Fine yarns attain greater lengths for any particular weight. Think of the type of yarn you’d prefer to use for undergarments as opposed to that which you’d use for a rug or window treatment.
Color. Shetland fleeces come in natural colors ranging from white to brown to black. The North American Shetland Sheepbreeders Association has identified eleven colors in all. For more information about the taxonomy of color in these animals as well as a discussion concerning color patterning in Shetlands follow the link to NASSA.
There are other aspects of the fleece that are of more or less importance to the fiber artist depending on the particular application. Wool fibers may be described by the degree to which they show luster. Luster in this case has the same meaning as in the vernacular sense of shine, sheen or gloss. Some wool fibers have lots of luster while others do not. Shetland fleeces especially may be double-coated meaning that they are made up of two sorts of fibers – soft, relatively short, and crimpy wool fibers (which have lots of loft and little luster) and coarse, long, and straight hairs (which have lots of luster but little loft). Finally, different fleeces may be characterized by differences in staple length which is a measure of the length of the wool fibers themselves. Handspinners will know that wool of longer staple is easier to spin.
This image shows a bit of a fleece taken at shearing earlier in the week. The edge at the top is the cut edge which lay close to the animal; the tips at the bottom were exposed to the weather and are sun bleached as a result (some folks cover their sheep to prevent this – we believe it adds depth to fleece color which we appreciate).
Like this:
A complementing shawl
An earlier post highlighted a Mother of the Bride Shawl designed to coordinate with the silver jaquard M.O.B. dress for our daughter’s upcoming wedding. The shawl below is intended for the Maid of Honor. This 8 shaft, extended-point twill works up quickly even in 10/2 perle cotton and is just plain fun to weave.
Extended-point twill
Below is a gallery which highlights the project I have called the Mother of the Bride Shawl, designed to coordinate with the silver jaquard M.O.B. dress for our daughter’s upcoming wedding. Hovering the images will reveal captions which describe technical aspects of the project. Clicking any of the images will take you to a carousel view; you may move forward and back on your own. ESC will bring you back to this original post.
Like this:
On beginning
Now that the wedding shawl project is finished, it is time to start something new. Sometimes this requires encouraging some creative inspiration; by leafing through pattern books and back issues of Spin-Off and Handwoven, or digging through the yarn stash and piling skeins and cones in different combinations, waiting for colors and textures to come together and suggest something. Usually, however, it is simply a matter of turning to the next item in the “things I have been trying to find time to make” list.
In The View From Saturday, by E. L. Konigsburg, a boy named Noah is being taught how to do calligraphic writing by an elderly woman named Tillie. She teaches him that filling the pen with ink properly involves six separate steps. Noah objects that six steps is a lot to do before you can begin writing. Tillie responds that the six steps to fill the pen ARE the beginning of writing.
It is easy to get impatient with, or bogged down in the preparation, when you are anxious to see a woven or knitted project begin to take shape. It helps to regard the preparatory steps as the actual beginning. Getting a warp measured out, threaded on, and tied up could be considered preparation for weaving. However if you regard it as part of the weaving process, your project is half finished by the time you throw the first shuttle. Knitting a test swatch to check the gauge is a tedious step that it is always tempting to omit, but it is faster and less frustrating than ripping out the first four inches of a sweater because it is turning out to be much larger or smaller than expected. Knitting a swatch and checking the gauge should really be a step in the process, as necessary as assembling the yarn and needles.
Several projects are begging to be undertaken, and surfaces are littered with skeins of wool or colorful clusters of cones of cotton warp, bits of paper with scribbled calculations, and pattern books sprouting clumps of page markers. Rifling through the various caches of “UFOs” (unfinished objects) has yielded one or two that are ripe for finishing and not yet gone by into “what was I thinking when I started that?” (or worse, “what was that supposed to be?”). One or two of the resulting projects may end up as false starts, but there is no doubt that something has begun …
