BYC Spinning Fiber

[bnjrob]

Really? Awesome! If anyone on here has some extra fibers, please PM me. Haha!

I don't have a place that I normally get them. I've just gone online and looked for nice deals and have bought some at craft fairs. One lady gave me a fleece that she didn't want to wash - it had a lot of VM (vegetable matter) to clean out of it. I washed it up, died it with koolaid, spun it, and knitted it into a neck warmer and fingerless mitts for a friend of mine. There's a lot of ways to find fiber. I initially learned to spin because the Extension office in my county put together a fiber arts group and we did all kinds of fiber arts.

For my first bit of spinning, I just bought some natural colored wool roving. All I had to do was draft it out and spin - no prep needed. And since it was a grayish color that isn't very popular, it was really inexpensive. That way I wasn't starting with anything expensive and being disappointed when it didn't come out as evenly textured while I was still learning.

 

[acemario]

I don't have a place that I normally get them.  I've just gone online and looked for nice deals and have bought some at craft fairs.  One lady gave me a fleece that she didn't want to wash - it had a lot of VM (vegetable matter) to clean out of it.  I washed it up, died it with koolaid, spun it, and knitted it into a neck warmer and fingerless mitts for a friend of mine.  There's a lot of ways to find fiber.  I initially learned to spin because the Extension office in my county put together a fiber arts group and we did all kinds of fiber arts.

For my first bit of spinning, I just bought some natural colored wool roving.  All I had to do was draft it out and spin - no prep needed.  And since it was a grayish color that isn't very popular, it was really inexpensive.  That way I wasn't starting with anything expensive and being disappointed when it didn't come out as evenly textured while I was still learning.

That is what I am hoping for. I am wanting to try a bully yarn at first. How many yards of a bulky yarn will one fleece give me on average?

 

[bnjrob]

That is what I am hoping for. I am wanting to try a bully yarn at first. How many yards of a bulky yarn will one fleece give me on average?

Someone may have come up with what they think an average is but I don't know of any hard numbers. So many variables - how big is the fleece, how much of the fleece is usable and doesn't have to be discarded, plus how bulky your idea of bulky is, and whether you spin it and leave it as a single yarn or if you ply it at all.

 

[acemario]

From the videos and websites ice been reading, I was hoping to do 2-ply yarn. I may have just found someone local with Icelandic sheep. Has anyone worked with this? Is $30 per fleece reasonable?

 

[acemario]

Sorry for all my questions! But I am excited to learn this great skill and hobby.

 

[bnjrob]

From the videos and websites ice been reading, I was hoping to do 2-ply yarn. I may have just found someone local with Icelandic sheep. Has anyone worked with this? Is $30 per fleece reasonable?

Oh yeah, I think $30/fleece is reasonable. When you're looking at buying ready made 100% wool yarn, one skein of mass-produced yarn from someone like Lion Brand will run you a minimum of $10/skein, usually more than that. A smaller manufacturer of wool yarn will cost more than that for a even a small skein of yarn and handspun can really be expensive, especially if they prepared their own fiber.

I still have several hanks left over from what I knitted from my fleece and it is sort of a *art* yarn, thick and thin 2ply. The neck warmer I knitted was about 18 inches in diameter, knitted in the round, and about 12 inches long. The fingerless mitts were long to cover most of the fingers and started before the wrists, so they were pretty long for mitts as well. And I knitted on like a #3 and 4 needles so it was a fairly tight fabric. I got a good deal of yarn out of my fleece. The lady that gave it to me said that it should be enough for a pair of socks - it was more than enough.

 

[acemario]

I got a Suffolk fleece last week, and last night I tried to wash it. I soaked it in cold water and rinsed it four or five times, then soaked it in the washer in hot water. I then ran it through a few minutes of the spin cycle and took it outside to dry. Now, it feels pretty soft and airy, but I can still feel the lanolin and there are lots of little tiny dirt pieces. What should I do? Can I rehash it again?

 

[bnjrob]

I got a Suffolk fleece last week, and last night I tried to wash it. I soaked it in cold water and rinsed it four or five times, then soaked it in the washer in hot water. I then ran it through a few minutes of the spin cycle and took it outside to dry. Now, it feels pretty soft and airy, but I can still feel the lanolin and there are lots of little tiny dirt pieces. What should I do? Can I rehash it again?

You may need to wash it several more times. Even then, you may still find that there are small dirt/vegetable matter particles in it. After your final wash, as you start picking it up and pulling the fibers apart in prep for carding it, you will find that the remaining pieces of stuff start falling out of the fleece. I usually do it on the bed so that I have the fleece on one side, a towel in my lap that I pull apart the fibers and fluff them so that the dirt and vegetable matter fall into the towel on my lap, then I put the fluffed fleece on the other side of me on a sheet.

 

[acemario]

You may need to wash it several more times.  Even then, you may still find that there are small dirt/vegetable matter particles in it.  After your final wash, as you start picking it up and pulling the fibers apart in prep for carding it, you will find that the remaining pieces of stuff start falling out of the fleece.  I usually do it on the bed so that I have the fleece on one side, a towel in my lap that I pull apart the fibers and fluff them so that the dirt and vegetable matter fall into the towel on my lap, then I put the fluffed fleece on the other side of me on a sheet. 

Ok. Thanks for the advice! Anyone else? What should I do next time? Will it hurt the fleece to try washing it again?

 

[bnjrob]

Ok. Thanks for the advice! Anyone else? What should I do next time? Will it hurt the fleece to try washing it again?

No, it won't hurt the fleece to wash it several times. You'll just want to avoid felting it, which generally occurs more often with hot water and/or too much pressure or rubbing it together. What I do is put the fleece inside a zip or tie-closure laundry bag and then submerge it in the water and gently squeeze the soap through the fibers - repeating it several times, then doing the same thing in a couple of rinse buckets. Let it dry, then do it again until it is clean as I want it.