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Steps in Processing Wool into Yarn

1. SheepWool comes from sheep. They grow a woolcoat and once a year this wool coat issheared off the animal. In Wisconsin, this isfrequently done in the early spring shortly before they have their lambs. A shorn ewewill be more likely to stay out of the windand bad weather and protect her new-bornlamb if she does not have a thick wool coaton her.2. FleeceThe shorn wool coat is called a fleece. It isalso called "grease wool" because of all theoil and lanolin in the wool. This fleece must be cleaned before it can be processed intowool yarn. There is much vegetable matter,manure and natural oil that must beremoved. Sometimes as much as 50% of theweight of the fleece is not wool.

3. Skirting a fleecethe wool from the back end of the sheep,their legs and sometimes their belly is toofull of manure to use. These are referred toas "tags" (as in the phrase "tag end"). Theseare removed first before washing the fleece;this process is called skirting, as all theedges of the wool coat are removed. Thefleeces are also sorted into the various types:fine from coarse and short from long.4. Washing the woolthe grease must then be removed from thewool. This can be done using soap or detergent and a lot of water or it can be done by submerging the wool in an acid bathwhich dissolves all the vegetable matter aswell as the grease (this is called scouring).5. Pickingthe washed and dried wool is then "teased"or "picked" which is the beginning of the process of opening up the locks of wool andturning it into a consistent web. The wool is

put through a picker which opens the locksand blows the fluffy wool into a room. Atthe same time special spinning oil is addedwhich helps the wool fibers slide againsteach other but also helps them stick together as a fine web through the processing.6. Cardingthe wool fibers are then put through a seriesof combing steps called carding. This can bedone with small hand cards that look muchlike brushes you would use on a dog. It canalso be done on a larger scale with machinedriven drums covered with "card cloth"which combs the wool many times bytransferring it back and forth from one drumto the other as it is passed down the series of drums. We have "woolen” cards which produce a wool web with the fibers comingoff in random alignment. This is in contrastto "worsted" combing that line up all thefibers (as you would see in thread).