Finn and BFL: You Learn Something Everyday
I am going to be getting a new batch of roving in from Wooly Knob Fiber Mill soon. It is supposed to be natural white Finn with a bit of pastel bamboo fiber blended into it. I will post it on the roving page on my website when it is available for sale.
Note for the non-fibrous among us: Roving is wool that has already been washed and carded and is ready to sit down and spin into yarn or use for needle-felting or wet-felting. Roving looks like this:
This roving is a blend of natural white and black. I am sold out of this color but it is easier to see the texture in the photo than it is with the solid color roving.
When you take it out of the bag, it looks a bit like a long, woolen caterpillar. You break off sections and stretch it out a bit to make it thinner (called pre-drafting) and then spin it into yarn. The advantage of roving is that it is clean, smells good and doesn't mess up your house. Also it is instant gratification. You just sit down and spin!
Back to our story... Last year I drove a whole bunch of fiber to Wooly Knob Fiber Mill in Indiana. I posted the story about going here. It was a lot more than I usually take at one time because it was a whole set of complete fleeces from two years ago, when my dog Frolic had her knee rebuilt and I didn't get my jackets repaired and on the sheep, as well as the neck wool and other misc. wool from last year. (BTW, there was a HUGE amount of dirty wasted wool the year I didn't jacket my fleeces. It was really a shame. I'll never let that happen again.)
About a month ago, I called the guys at Wooly Knob to ask them a question about making roving for machine spun yarn for my friend who knits but doesn't spin. They mentioned that they had found one bag of my wool in their storeroom that had somehow gotten separated from the rest of my order. (Which wouldn't be hard since I took them about a million bags... ok, maybe 2 million. It seemed like it anyway.) The wool was white and they knew I already had a ton of white roving. So they asked if i would like this carded with flecks of some new bamboo they had just gotten that was all pastels. (It is soft, sort of like flax which is used to make linen; not hard like the stuff pandas chew on.) I said sure!
So this week, I called and asked them if it was almost ready to ship because I have sold out of several colors of roving this spring. They said that they had sent it back to the washing side for a second washing because it hadn't gotten clean the first time. I was really surprised by that because the wool was not very dirty and Finn wool does not have a lot of lanolin in it compared to other types of wool. (When it is washed you lose about 30-35% weight from removal of the grease, not 40-50% like Merino, for example.) They said that it is due to the lock structure of the wool. It does not allow the water and soap to penetrate into the fibers and get it clean. He said that in Finn and Blue Faced Leicester, they send it back (to their washing side) to be re-washed about 90% of the time. It is because these two breeds have almost identical lock structure. Who knew? You learn something everyday!
Note for the non-fibrous among us: Roving is wool that has already been washed and carded and is ready to sit down and spin into yarn or use for needle-felting or wet-felting. Roving looks like this:
When you take it out of the bag, it looks a bit like a long, woolen caterpillar. You break off sections and stretch it out a bit to make it thinner (called pre-drafting) and then spin it into yarn. The advantage of roving is that it is clean, smells good and doesn't mess up your house. Also it is instant gratification. You just sit down and spin!
Back to our story... Last year I drove a whole bunch of fiber to Wooly Knob Fiber Mill in Indiana. I posted the story about going here. It was a lot more than I usually take at one time because it was a whole set of complete fleeces from two years ago, when my dog Frolic had her knee rebuilt and I didn't get my jackets repaired and on the sheep, as well as the neck wool and other misc. wool from last year. (BTW, there was a HUGE amount of dirty wasted wool the year I didn't jacket my fleeces. It was really a shame. I'll never let that happen again.)
About a month ago, I called the guys at Wooly Knob to ask them a question about making roving for machine spun yarn for my friend who knits but doesn't spin. They mentioned that they had found one bag of my wool in their storeroom that had somehow gotten separated from the rest of my order. (Which wouldn't be hard since I took them about a million bags... ok, maybe 2 million. It seemed like it anyway.) The wool was white and they knew I already had a ton of white roving. So they asked if i would like this carded with flecks of some new bamboo they had just gotten that was all pastels. (It is soft, sort of like flax which is used to make linen; not hard like the stuff pandas chew on.) I said sure!
So this week, I called and asked them if it was almost ready to ship because I have sold out of several colors of roving this spring. They said that they had sent it back to the washing side for a second washing because it hadn't gotten clean the first time. I was really surprised by that because the wool was not very dirty and Finn wool does not have a lot of lanolin in it compared to other types of wool. (When it is washed you lose about 30-35% weight from removal of the grease, not 40-50% like Merino, for example.) They said that it is due to the lock structure of the wool. It does not allow the water and soap to penetrate into the fibers and get it clean. He said that in Finn and Blue Faced Leicester, they send it back (to their washing side) to be re-washed about 90% of the time. It is because these two breeds have almost identical lock structure. Who knew? You learn something everyday!
Your lambs are beautiful! Congratulations!
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