I recently completed my second and third Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em project. So far I’ve done Clun Forest (which I wrote about in this post), Tunis lambswool, and Leicester Longwool. If you’re not familiar with the Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em (SE2SE) program, it’s a program run by The Livestock Conservancy to promote rare and endangered sheep breeds. You can learn more by visiting rarewool.org.
Now that I’m knitting my hexagon blanket ‘squares’ for each breed it’s given a bit of structure to my breed sampling. For each new breed I take around 1/2 an ounce to an ounce of the wool and spin a ~DK-weight 2-ply to get a gauge that will work for the blanket piece. Most of the time I spin with a short forward draft, but sometimes another draft just works better, as with the Clun Forest. If I have more than about 2 oz, as for the SE2SE projects (the minimum purchase is 4 oz), I spin it however I think will be best based on my sampling. I have to admit I haven’t been great about keeping fiber or plyback samples, but I do record the WPI, weight and yardage of my finished skeins, so that I can figure out the grist for selecting a potential knitting project. Note that I record my grist as yds/ 100 g for easier comparison to commercially-spun yarns.
My second project was American Tunis lambswool roving from Tarheel Billy Farm. I didn’t really know what to expect from this breed. The information I have from the breeder and The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook tells me this is a dual-purpose breed (bred mainly for meat) and that the first Tunisian Barbary sheep were sent to North America when a few sheep were sent as a gift to the government in 1799. Tunis lambs have a reddish color to their wool when born, which fades to a creamy white over time. The breed is well adapted to hot, humid climates and is popular throughout the Southeastern US.
This lambswool was lovely and fluffy, and after spinning a two-ply sample for my blanket square, I decided to spin the rest into a 3-ply woolen yarn using a long draw technique. I think the resulting yarn will make a lovely hat and/ or pair of mittens.
Final yarn: grist 152 yds/ 100g; ~11 wpi
My third project was Leicester Longwool spun from washed locks. I bought this wool from Fuzzy Ewe Farm after seeing a photo of the dyed, millspun yarn on Instagram – it had so much depth sheen you’d swear it was silk! While I had worked from raw wool before, this was my first time working from washed locks. Since I don’t yet have wool combs I decided to use my flick carder to maximize the sheen. After sampling I also decided I needed to re-wind my bobbins and ply in the same direction that I spun in to make the yarn as smooth as possible.
I divided the flicked locks into two groups by color and spun separate skeins. Although washed, the locks still had a fair amount of grease in them, and I found the fiber somewhat tricky to spin. I probably would’ve been happier if I’d given the wool another wash before prepping, so I did wash the leftovers from flicking before carding it. For the carded batch I blended the colors together at random. I was pleasantly surprised by how soft and fluffy the leftover fibers were. Since the fiber lengths varied a lot in the carded preparation, I decided to try spinning it with supported longdraw. It came out rather uneven, but I decided to knit my blanket ‘square’ from this carded preparation.
Final yarn: grist 220 yds/ 100g; ~17wpi
This project confirmed my sense that I don’t love spinning longwools. I’m still fascinated by their sheen, and I just might have to buy one of the dyed millspun skeins and knit up a project with it. I also really liked the color variation in this fleece. I’m not sure yet what I’ll knit or weave with the yarn I’ve spun, but I think maybe some lace knitting or incorporating into some free-form weaving might work well. If you’ve worked with longwools, what have you knit or woven with them?
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