Earlier this year I went to the Maryland Sheep & Wool fiber festival for the first time and had an absolute blast! I, like I imagine most fiber artist, thought it was so cool to see where my wool came from and dreamed of going through the entire process of turning raw fleece into to a knitted item.

After this visit I decided it was time to upgrade from a drop spindle to a spinner and purchased my first e-spinner, the EEW 6.1. I really wanted to get a wheel but with the price point starting around $600, I thought the e-spinner would be a better first step.

After plenty of research, lots of spinning, and the delusions of time after only a few weeks I decided I was ready to get my first raw fleece. And here’s where I’m documenting my journey from start to finish.

Where did I begin?

Before I jumped head first I wanted to answer one of the biggest hurdles for me and that is that I live in a small apartment without a yard. Which means cleaning a raw fleece will be incredibly difficult (grease from fleece is like grease from cooking, it should not going down the drain). This part of the process is honestly what almost made me quick until I realized that there are some small mills who are able to do the processing for me!

I used the American Sheep Industry Association to find mills close to me and inquired about their services. Most all offered just washing and returning the washed fleeces back. Others also offered roving and turning your raw fleeces into yarn. Washing was the shortest process for most places with roving taking anywhere from 3-8 months and yarn taking about 8-14 months.

Because I wanted to do a lot of the processing for myself but thought it would be a good idea to not make this too labor intensive I decided to opt for having my fleeces turned into roving. This way I could still do the spinning part and have a good time.

Starting the Process

I didn’t get any raw fleece while at the festival so needed to figure out my next best options for purchasing raw fleeces. Most of the closer farms to me didn’t have fleeces available so my next step was to go on online. I found a facebook group called Raw Fleece for Sale which was a great way to see farmers who were selling their fleeces.

After some searching and watching I decided I wanted longer staple length fleeces so went with Border Leicester and kept an eye on a few farmers selling these types of fleeces. My goal when picking these fleeces were to look for farmers who sheared for fiber (trying to avoid second cuts), had some what clean or semi skirted fleeces (to minimize my time) and had great photos.

I ended up purchasing from two different farmers and was really happy with the way everything looked.

Skirting the Fleece

So one thing most mills mention on their website is that you need to skirt the fleece first before sending it in. For some reason I was struggling to find good resources for exactly what this process looked like so it took me days to skirt the first fleece. I was literally pulling out very small pieces of vegetable matter (VB) thinking this is what I was suppose to be doing.

After a couple of hours I finally did a proper google search and found out that for the most part, skirting was to remove larger pieces (think 1/2 or more) so that not only was your fleece semi free of VB but also it wouldn’t do any damage to the mill’s machine.

I stress about this part because I didn’t want to cause more work or cost for me or the mill by not at least being thorough with this. Thankfully once I processed the first fleece, I felt significantly more confident with skirting the next and that process went a lot faster.

Sending it Away

After feeling good about skirting my fleece it was time to package it up and send it to the mill of my choice! Unfortunately the mills closest to me were backed up and not accepting new orders so I needed to ship these out of state. Thankfully I live close enough to a few other fiber focused States and was able to send them not too far away.

Moment of Truth!

I had a mishap with another fleece from a different breed of sheep (check out that blog here) so I was very nervous to receive these orders. Thankfully the fleece is GORGEOUS! Beautifully created and they added some lovely fragrance to the packaging so it was a nice touch.

Spinning!

Coming Soon