In January of 2006 I found a distributer of mill ends from Brown Sheep Yarn Company. These mill ends were loose fiber left over from their carding process. I remembered that Brown Sheep Yarn Company had produced a roving call the “Beast” made from carding mill ends and spinners, including myself, really liked it. They called it the “beast” because it was carded on an old big card called the beast.
Eventually Brown Sheep stopped making Beast roving. I think it had something to do with a breakdown of the card and age of the card master. So they started selling the carding mill ends.
My goal was to play with these mill ends on my big card and see what I could do with them. The fiber was very nice, a mix of wool and mohair in a huge variety of colors. Since my source provided the mill ends unsorted, I never knew what colors I would get. The term Potluck came from this uncertainty of colors, similar to a Potluck party- you never know what you will get.
Some of my first colors.
As I continued to produce this early Potluck Roving™ by blending various colors on my card I started to get a growing customer base and felt that I needed a more consistent color and fiber source. After a long search I found a wool broker who would supply me with white wool combed top which was USA grown, very soft and of consistent quality. However, I had to purchase large quantities of this wool with each order. A bit scary to lay out all the money in the hopes I could make a product and sell it on a large scale!
more early colors.
One of the things I’ve learned with starting a business is that risks are a necessary part of growth. What I don’t do is jump blindly. Lots of research and discussions with my business savvy husband precede new products. But, it’s still scary.
Combed Top- this is fiber that has been washed, carded and combed into a long rope like preparations which has all the vegetation and short fibers removed. The combing process also straightens out the crimp of the wool fibers and makes them all parallel and smooth. My dying process restores the crimp (waviness) of the wool and the re-carding results in a more random arrangement of the wool fibers, a fuzzy roving. Carded roving is much easier to spin since it is not so slippery so it is great for beginning spinners. As far as I know I am the only processor to reverse process combed top back into carded roving.
I started dying fiber and developing color combinations. This was fun. There were lots of muddy combinations, but also some wonderful surprises with color combos that I thought would be horrible together and came out fantastic. The challenge was to break out of my color comfort zone and use colors I am not fond of.
Then I had to market this new product. Cold calls to spinning shops were necessary and although not fun at first, I got used to it. (This calling experience came in handy later on as I coordinated a charity auction for the Ferndale Marching Band and had to request donations from many, many, many people and companies. By then I had no fear of cold calls.)
As I write this I have 16 colorways in Potluck Roving™ and it is selling in five states.
Purple Haze and Party Time- 2 popular colors
Sorry about this post being so long, I just couldn’t help going into teacher mode.
I truly believe that wool is a miraculous fiber. It grows on sheep each year and we get to enjoy the company of sheep while this happens. Sheep are actually quite smart- at being a sheep. They have well develop predator avoidance instincts which make them appear less than “smart” as compared to other predatory species like dogs. But I digress; I want this post to be a description of how wool from a sheep becomes cloth.
The type of wool you get from a sheep depends on the breed of sheep. I have read that there are over 190 different breeds of sheep around the world. Each breed has come from people breeding the animals to select specific characteristics, fineness or coarseness of the wool, quality of meat, mothering abilities, disease resistance, etc..
Wool can be so soft that babies can wear it next to the skin, or so coarse that it holds up in rugs for many years. Wool has crimp or waves in the fiber which give it “memory” to return to its original shape. This allows us to knit garments which continue to fit for years. As long as we don’t change our shape ;)
Some sheep grow wool so long that they need shearing 2 times per year, but most get a haircut once per year. This shearing process is normally not too stressful for the sheep because skilled shearers know how to place the animal and can shear quickly and carefully. My sheep seem to remember the routine after a few times and just relax during the process. Plus, I have a really good shearer!
One of my black sheep being sheared.
The quality of the fiber is determined by many factors, the health of the animal, the timing of shearing, the skill of the shearer, and the skill of the shepherd during the year in keeping vegetation out of the wool.
Once the wool or ”Fleece” is off the sheep it is “skirted” which is basically a sorting and discarding process. The name comes from taking the dirty, poopy, contaminated edges or “skirt” of the fleece off the good parts of the fleece.
Family helping with skirting. It was rainy so we did it inside the shop.
The fleece then needs to be washed which is called “scouring”. This involves soaking the wool in very HOT water with soap to dissolve the lanoline off the fiber. For commercial operations all the lanolin is removed before further processing otherwise it would gum up the machines. Large processors can extract the lanolin, purify it and then it is used in all kinds of products ranging from rust preventative coatings to cosmetics to lubricants.
Scouring removes the grease (lanolin) from the fleece and most of the dirt, but it doesn’t remove any vegetation that is tangled in the fibers. Sheep acquire hay, seeds and other debris over the course of the year in their wool. The less of this vegetation in the fiber, the better the quality yarn and fabric.
Wool on the drying racks.
The wet wool is dried and then “picked”. Picking is the process of opening up the locks of fiber. It can be done by hand or by machine. I use a machine. As the locks are opened, debris falls out and the wool looks like fluffy cotton candy.
My Picker, designed and built by genius husband, Dave.
If the wool is going to by dyed, it can be done before picking and the fiber is said to be “Dyed in the Wool”. Of course yarn can be dyed and so can fabric, but the highest quality and best color comes from dying in the wool.
Now its time for carding the wool. Commercial carding is the process of using a machine with rolls covered in wire “brushes” (basically it looks like the rolls are coved with the ends of thousands of staples) to brush the wool, open up the fibers further and somewhat align them. Sort of like brushing your hair. If you have ever seen a dog slicker brush, that is what the carding surface looks like. Of course it is more complicated than this explanation, there are different gauges of wire, different types, and the distances between carding rolls must be adjusted depending on the type of fiber being carded.
Dyed picked wool on the in-feed of the card.
When we purchased our card which was built in 1925, we had no idea how to set up all the rolls. I searched out old carding manuals on Ebay and those helped us to set up the machine. There was also some trial and error involved in the beginning.
Dyed wool coming off the card as Roving. The roving maker is another Dave design.
Commercial carding for hand spinning results in a long thick or thin (depending on machine) ropelike collection of wool called “Roving”. The wool fibers are arranged somewhat randomly, not parallel so hand spinners can spin a fluffy “woolen” yarn. Further processing the roving in a combing machine results in “Combed Top” which aligns the wool fibers parallel to each other, eliminated all debris and stretches out the crimp of the fiber. Spinners can then spin a smooth “worsted” yarn from combed wool top. Commercial processors for the non-hand spinning market have other terms for the products coming off of the card- “pencil roving” or “sliver” (pronounced with a long “i” not like “river”).
One thing I notice quite often is the confusion between “roving” and “combed top” or “top”. Shops and their customers confuse the two and new spinners often don’t know what product they are purchasing or how to spin it.
Hand spinning involves taking the roving and twisting it into the thickness of single ply yarn that you want. You can accomplish this many ways, by rolling the fiber on your leg, by a simple spindle that you twirl, or on a spinning wheel. The spinning wheel comes in many varieties and is designed for different types of fiber or end yarn. (I won’t even begin to discuss plant fibers here, cotton, linen, etc.) Many wheels are versatile these days and will allow you to spin just about anything.
I use an electric wheel to save my arthritic knees, but the hand motions are the same only the power is different.
Some of my hand spun yarn.
Once you have yarn singles, then it can be plyed with other strands to make it stronger or thicker. It really depends on your end use of the yarn. Of course yarn is then used in knitting, crochet, needle point and weaving.
Weaving at its most basic is taking yarn and passing strands over and under each other. The Loom allows weavers to make more complicated patterns by raising and lowering Warp threads so that Weft threads can be passed between them. The number of types of looms is huge and each culture around the world came up with their own unique twist on the loom to serve their needs.
Front of the loom, you can see the cloth with the shuttle holding the weft thread.
The back of the loom, showing warp threads which go through "heddles" which can be lifted to lift the warp threads.
Our wool mill only processes wool to the roving stage, we do not commercially spin yarn or weave cloth. However, I spin yarn and weave for my own fun. I find spinning very calming and meditative, while weaving involves lots of math and calculations of yardage and thread interlacements. Weaving appeals to my scientific/math brain.
