A Gotland Feece

I've stuck to my self imposed yarn diet that I started way back in January. The only yarn I have purchased has been for 2 swaps plus a further 2 balls to knit a baby hat for a gift. I have not added to my stash in any way shape or form. However, I did succumb recently and bought a bag of Gotland fleece, just a part fleece, not a whole one ~ my excuse was that I have never spun Gotland and 'needed' to try it!

The Gotland is a rare breed of Baltic origin. Their fleece is extremely soft, curly and silvery grey. The Gotland is a very hardy sheep and when the lambs are born they are jet black.
There are approximately 1000 Gotland sheep in New Zealand. These sheep are very curious and friendly, being closer in appearance and personality to goats than to sheep.





On the left are a few locks after washing, unwashed on the right. The grey colouring seems to be concentrated more at the tip end of the fleece. I love the way the tips curl up and also the nice springy crimp:

After washing the locks seem to have a nice lustre to them, the fibre would be soft enough for clothing although it's not like merino soft. I will wash the rest of the fleece and hopefully sample it on the wheel this week.

A Half Bred Fleece....

I needed a break from all the alpaca, so yesterday evening I was sorting out my stash cupboard when I came across a half bred fleece I had purchased last year, intending to wash and prep the fibre ready for spinning of course ~ until I got side tracked by all the alpaca.

Half Bred Sheep:
A registered breed that was originally developed in the 19th century by crossing one of the English long wools such as Romney or English Leicester with the merino. They were developed for both wool and meat and are suited to hill and high country.

The staples are well defined and chunky with crimp right up to the tip. It is classed as a fine wool with medium bulk. There can be wide variation amongst fleeces.

Fibre is usually between 21 - 33 microns.
staple length is 75-110 mm
An excellent fibre when soft durability is required.

It's a waxy type fleece so needs a good wash in very hot water.

I had already prepped a small portion of it and spun it up, but the majority was sat looking at me, so I bagged some up and put it in a bucket of hot water and dish washing liquid, soaked for 20 minutes then changed the water and soaked for a further 15 minutes then 2 rinses in hot water. I set it out on a mesh rack to dry overnight:

Obviously the locks on the left are unwashed, the ones on the right washed. They come up nice and clean apart from a tiny bit on the very tip which I snip off with scissors. The combed fibre is at the back, yet more beautiful squishy nests that I will look forward to spinning. I would say the fibre is next to skin soft for me, it's lofty and light and would knit into a nice comfortable, yet hard wearing sweater.












I enjoyed spinning some of it into a fingering weight 2 ply yarn:

I have 2.6kg of this to get through and have noticed there's very little waste when combing it. I shall continue to work on this when needing a break from the alpaca.

Carded Alpaca Fibre......

I got my alpaca fibre back from the carders just before Christmas but I haven't had time to look at it it until recently. I'm really happy with it. This is the rest of little Saturn's fleece, I had it blended with 30% fine merino fibre:

It's wonderfully soft and fluffy, just like clouds. There's 1.6 kg.













This is the rest of Chantalini's fleece, I kept this one as 100% alpaca. It was a deep fawn with white patches so the white fibre was blended in together with the darker and it's come out as a mid fawn, much different to the fibre (from the same alpaca) that I hand prepped and blogged about here. It weighs 3kg and is also lovely and clean and soft:

The shearer came last week so now there's 4 more fleeces to contend with but they shouldn't take me as long to clean as the last 4, they are much cleaner to start with. I learned my lesson, I now rake out their shelter every 2 weeks which cuts down on fleece contamination with the dreaded V.M. I'm still working on cleaning Radar's chocolate brown fleece from last year, and am about halfway through it, 4 bags of it washed and dried today as we have superb weather and I have a rare day off work.



I'm going to clean up Caesar and Jupiter's fleece and get them sent off to the carders, but I would like to do Saturn's and Radar's myself again. I just wish it wasn't so time consuming. But, I enjoy it and love spinning hand combed fibre, for me there's just nothing that compares to it.