Fleeces

There are many of natural spinable fiber materials. First, they are vegetable fibers like flax or cotton. Second, except silk from silkworm, they are fibers of fur from many species of animals. Especially dog fur is a favourite material for spinning. Also we can't omit shawl (Kashmir) goat, llama and camel.

After all the most favourite material for hand working is without question sheep wool. Breeders in many places of world and in many times improved a big number of breeds, mainly for meat and milk production, but also for their wool.

Sheep is as a rule once a year sheared and the professional clippers accomplish to do it so, that all the fur coat, created by cut fibers, does not crumble. It hangs together in shape of the skin and it's called fleece.

Fleeces are various colours and are created by different-sized and different fine fibers. Raw fleece is impregnated by natural fat (lanolin) and contains more or less impurities (grass, thistles etc.).

There is no problem to spin fine, clear and nondishevelled fleece without any previous preparation, if you are able to spin. In other case, there is need to wash and card the greasy fleece before next working (hand carders and drum carder see Carding) and so to get the wool batts, which are the ideal material for spinning. Sometimes the batts are larded again for easier spinning by the emulsion - mixture water and oil 1:1.