It’s great to go to a store, choose a beautiful sweater and buy it right there with no more effort than opening our wallets and carrying a bag to our car. Most of us don’t think about how much labor used to go into making the yarn that wool clothing is made from. Even today, with machines doing most of the work, it is a very detailed process. So let’s pretend we have to make that sweater from scratch—just how much work is involved?
Of course, the sheep must first be sheared. The shorn coat is called grease wool because of the oil and lanolin it contains. It has to be cleaned of vegetable matter, dirt, manure and its natural oils. Before it’s cleaned it is “skirted”; the edges of the wool coat are removed. The wool from the hindquarter and belly is often full of manure, called “tags” that have to be cut off. After cleaning it may be as much as half its original weight because of all the material cleaned out. The fleeces are then sorted according to their texture and length.
The fleece must then be washed with soap or detergent or put through an acid bath which dissolves the grease and vegetable matter. Then it is “picked”, opening up the locks of the wool much like untangling a lock of hair. These days a machine is used for this that produces clean, fluffy wool and adds a “spinning oil” that makes it easier for the fibers to stick together throughout the processing. In the old days they didn’t have machines or special oil.
Next the clean wool is carded; carding is another word for combing, used to prepare it for being turned into thread by spinning. Carding separates and straightens the wool fibers. The result is a bat of lofty wool. Carders are a pair of wooden paddles with wire faces, much like a wire brush you would use to groom an animal. The teeth can be coarse for wool and mohair or fine for carding cotton and softer fibers such as angora. You lay the wool across the teeth of the carder, laying it evenly across the entire surface until the teeth are barely visible. Then the second carder is placed directly over the first and used to gently brush the first about 5-10 times until the fibers are distributed evenly among both cards. The bottom edge of the first carder is then lined up with the handle edge of the second and the fiber is lifted and pushed until it reaches the other edge, forming a roll called a rolag or bat. This is what is used for spinning the fibers into thread.
Once you have a bat you take it in one hand and with the other you gently pull out about 18 inches of fiber. You’ll need a spindle to hold the thread and a distaff to hold the bats. A spindle is a rod with a solid base and looks a lot like a CD with a rod protruding from the center and above and below it…it looks rather like the “ab rollers” that used to be advertised. Add a hook to the top of the rod. Pull the fiber as thin as you can without pulling it apart and attach it to the spindle, holding it there with the hand you use the least.
Keeping hold of the fiber, use your other hand to roll the spindle up the length of your leg smoothly then let it go so that it spins in the air. While it spins, keep pulling the fibers thin without separating them. When the strand of what is now yarn is long enough to reach the floor and can’t be spun anymore, take it off the spindle and wind it around the lower portion of the spindle before the base, keeping some of it to wind back up and over the spindle. When you reach the end of the bat leave it as is and add it to the first section of the fiber from a new bat so that the sections combine. Then continue spinning until you have all the yarn you want for your project.
People spun by hand, with spindles, for century before the spinning wheel was invented in the High Middle Ages. Many people still love to spin by hand, considering it a relaxing and productive hobby. They also enjoy hand dyeing the yarn that they’ve spun with their own hands.