Our Yarn Making Adventure Begins
I have an exciting project planned this year, and I would love it if you’d like to join us on the journey. We are going to be making our very own yarn, from my family’s small flock of sheep.
It’s going to be a huge learning curve, and I’m going to break down the process into the steps that I believe we are going to need to take. I’ll blog as I go, and these are the areas that I think we’ll focus in onto. I will turn them into links as they unfold. So if you’re a bit late to the party click on those that have appeared and you can come along with us.
- Equipment
- Shearing
- Skirting
- Washing
- Drying
- Carding
- Spinning
- Dyeing
Getting the kit ready
The first step will absolutely be making sure we’ve got everything we need. I like to be prepared, that means ideally there won’t be any last minute runs to the farm store or panics in the yard as we realise we are unprepared. Well, here’s hoping!
Shearing the sheep
So far our lovely little family of ewes has been sheared with the help of my parent’s local sheep farmer buddy. I’m going to push myself into the mix this time and get some film for you. And try to learn how to do it ourselves in future. (Maximum optimism!)
Skirting
Nope, nothing to do with actual skirts, so i’m told, this is the process of laying the wool onto a screen and removing all the grubs. If you get up close and personal with sheep at any point, you’ll see that they are absolute tangle magnets for bits of bush, tree, and other things I’d rather not mention.
Washing
Sadly you can’t bung freshly sheared wool into the washing machine or you’d quickly end up with a gorgeous pile of felt. Fun for sure, but no good for making yarn.
What we’re going to need to do is bag up the wool in nylon sacks, possibly made from old tights or stockings! They will then go into a bath of hot water, get scrubbed, drained and the process repeated until all the dirt is washed away.
Drying
The wool will then be left somewhere clean to dry out. Hopefully we’ll have good weather and can hang it in bags in the yard somehow! I’ll have to investigate whether the tumble drier is a remotely viable option here.
Carding
This bit is where things get really interesting. Carding is a process of brushing out the wool so that all the fibers are smooth and laid in the same direction. We’ll need to decide between hand carding and using a machine, I expect for budgetary reasons we’ll be going with the hand option as it’s our first go.
Spinning
The classic part of turning wool into yarn is spinning. This will require some hefty kit, and I’m hoping to grab a second hand bargain spinning wheel to turn the wool strands into fiber.
Dyeing
Once we’ve got our gorgeous yarn hanks, we are going to have a try at dyeing them. It’s a process with plenty of potential to go wrong. You want not only lovely colors, but also for the yarn to bind to the dye enough that it won’t leach when touched or even washed.
Wish us luck, and I’ll update you on our sheep to wool to yarn creation adventure soon!
