wool consultant?

 


I thought you might be interested in some of my latest adventures.  A little while ago, I heard that someone was giving away "free wool" but the story was more complex than that.  The short version?  A local stable was going through a transition and had an empty arena and a lot of empty loose boxes indoors this winter.  The province animal welfare folks seized a flock of sheep, plus 2 guard llamas.  I have no idea of the details, but this farm ended up with 40 sheep.  The flock was not in good health; there were dead animals in the field.

 The flock was cared for by the provincial vets and animal control folks and stayed indoors in the arena, warm and dry, during our very cold winter.  (-20 to -40 can be too cold for sheep to be outside without any sort of shelter, too!)  Before the sheep were sent on to their new home, a shearer came in and helped out.  Some (or all?) of those 40 fleeces ended up in a loose box in the stable in March.  Although I think the shearer did do brief skirting, there was no sorting or careful containment as this shearing was entirely for health reasons. 

Sheep who have been stressed often have breaks in their fleece, and some of these sheep had serious health concerns.  The stable had very caring horse people there, but they knew nothing about sheep or wool.

By the time I got out there with a friend to really help go through the fleeces, it was maybe 2 months later.  To our surprise, it was, in some part, a wool flock.  There were a mixture of breeds, Jacob and Jacobs' crosses, Icelandic, and some fine wool white sheep. 

When I was a kid, just learning to spin, a huge pile of free raw wool seemed like a good dream.  Unfortunately, adults know those pesky details can get in the way.

 What happened?  My friend and I managed to salvage 4 fleeces that looked ok.  One dark brown/reddish Icelandic fleece, a Jacob, and a couple of fine wool (one was maybe a Finn cross) fleeces.  We were making good progress on a very windy, cold day on the prairie.  We were indoors, but it was cold and wet and we had only a couple hours before I had to head back to town for preschool pick up.

I stepped into that great mound of wool to retrieve half a fleece and (if you are squeamish, please sit down now) mice TEEMED out of it.  I screamed, of course, it was surprising.  Not really surprising, in retrospect, as I would choose that place to nest if I were a mouse, but...when I described it to my boys, they said, "TWO mice?" and I said no.  They said "TEN mice?" and well, I said, "Ok, ten."  It was more than ten.

 

Worse, after that moment, the next 4 or 5 fleeces were checked were damaged beyond repair.  There was water penetration in the stable from a large snow bank and the fleeces were very wet.  We're not sure how many fleeces were from sick sheep, or if the water or the pest infestation was the problem.  Short version?  The rest had to go to the landfill.  Sad, but true, especially because getting rid of those mice was important, too.

What happened to the fleece?

 

I ended up parking 4 fleeces on my front porch.  I washed them all--not to get them spotlessly clean, but clean enough so someone would be willing to bring them into their house.  The Icelandic and Jacob fleeces have gone a new home for $15 a piece, to benefit the Manitoba Fibre Festival.  I have two white (ish) fine wool fleeces left....good for felting or maybe for spinning.  They will require a thorough second cleaning and do still have vegetable matter in them....  Drop me a note with contact information if you are interested.

I know that many spinners these days focus almost exclusively on cleaned wool roving and even hand-dyed roving.  Some people never process a raw fleece from scratch.  Meeting sheep and being at shearing day, starting from scratch?  This has been one of my great joys as a spinner.  I have more than one garment from a friend's sheep--and I was there to catch it when it was shorn, I washed it, I teased, carded or combed it, I spun it, I knit it...I like this process.

I also like being there to try to save something from nothing.  These rescue sheep have gone on to a better home.  I hope now a small fraction of their hard work, their wool, can be made worthwhile.

math for budget conscious spinners

Remember the sheep shearing I went to on May 26th?

I bring it up because today, my lovely fleeces came back from the fiber mill. I sent them to Stonehedge Fiber Mill to be washed and carded. I don't do this with all my fleeces, but gosh, I figured I ought to concentrate on packing and not washing 40 some lbs of fleece. Yes, it was a lot of fleece.

I'm frequently asked if spinning is an expensive hobby. I say no! The other spinners around me at the spinning guild will say "Yes!" Why the discrepancy? Well, let's crunch some numbers.

Let's say I already have basic equipment like a spindle or hand cards, and a spinning wheel. Let's not talk equipment, although you can be spinning in no time with a $5 handmade spindle or a $5000 custom built spinning wheel. Let's just talk spinning fiber. Let's talk wool.

I often go to a sheep shearing or a fleece show or auction to get my wool. What does handspinning wool cost? Anything from free to $33 a pound. Free doesn't always mean "bad wool." It may mean the shepherd or shearer doesn't want to deal with the wool for one reason or another, or that the industrial wool pool pays so little that year as to be useless.

$33 a pound is the exorbitant price paid for a grand champion fleece at New York State Sheep & Wool Festival (Rhinebeck) a couple of years ago. This is way too much dough for wool, in my opinion!

For the complete newbie, a perfectly spinnable fleece can be purchased for $5 to $10 a pound. Many fleeces are less expensive, some are more. The price doesn't correlate to any kind of rating or quality. You need to learn to judge a fleece on its merits on your own. For your first or second fleece, bring a friend along. If you're really on your own, ask the shepherd. If they're honest and they know something, they'll tell you what they think of the fleece, too!

So, the fleece comes home and I decide to send it all off to be processed.
Note: Check out Fiber Gathering for information in how to skirt a fleece...

40 lbs of fleece are packed up and shipped via USPS parcel post to the mill. $33 in postage later, I come home. I wait. When the fleece comes back, I've got approximately 23 lbs of gorgeous washed and carded roving. Some of the wool is even blended with mohair, as per my request. Light, airy, and just popping out of the box to be spun. (use your imagination here, I haven't managed a photo!) Cost? $221.
Note: This would be less if I'd washed and carded it all at home, but water/energy also cost money. Likely no where near $221, but worth remembering at this juncture.

OK, so let's round that to $250 for 23 lbs of fiber. If you got this Romney wool for free, as I did, (the farmer's partial to me and he doesn't sell his wool) that's about $10.87 a pound. I always bring the farmer a present in exchange, but let's not budget that in. Instead, let's pretend the wool cost $5 a pound for the raw wool, which would be: $5 X 40 lbs=200 dollars.
Note: $5 a pound, while not a fortune, would enable that farmer to do far better than if he sold the wool at the industrial wool pool. He might even break even or earn a small amount.

That would bring the cost of the wool up to: $250+200=450 dollars
450 dollars/23 lbs=$19.57 a pound

Your average adult sweater weighs around 2 lbs in finished weight. That is equivalent to just under 40 dollars. Not expensive...because I'm not counting all the processing time (knitting/spinning) as being work. If I counted the hours this took to process, it would be a very pricey sweater. Maybe $1000 or more at minimum wage.
Note: This is why it's not generally cost effective to have someone commission a spinner to make a sweater.

As a hobby with a sweater end product, this isn't expensive when you consider the many hours of enjoyment I'll get spinning and knitting this sweater.

Can spinning be expensive? Oh, absolutely. If one buys only hand-dyed roving, imagine paying roughly $20 to $40 for 4 oz of wool. That's lovely colorful stuff. If you buy enough for the same 2 lb sweater and it costs $30 for 4 oz... multiply up and that is $240 for an equivalent amount of fiber.

$40 versus $240. Wow. That's a big spread.

Budget conscious spinners are now wondering about dyeing, and how much those packets of dye cost. Well, it varies in price, but it certainly doesn't cost anything like $200. Time to buy some dyes, you're thinking?
Note: Check out the dyeing tutorial in Fiber Gathering!

Now, even if you only buy processed fiber, it's still an affordable, if not budget-conscious, hobby with practical results at the end. When compared to, say, yachting, or golf vacations, or a ski chalet in the Alps? Spinning and knitting sound downright affordable. However, if you're worried about saving money in a recession?

Buy Fleece. Buy lots of fleece.
(If you don't get to spin it all, it makes great packing material and even better insulation.)

Was this helpful? Please let me know in the comments and feel free to pass along to any spinning friends who might be interested. I'd love more blog readers! Now, back to packing...moving day is in 2.5 weeks. Winnipeg ho!

Yesterday...

You might recognize this farm from Fiber Gathering.
Yesterday, the horse really wasn't feeling well. The farmer handed me her feed: I fed her the oats with medicine in them.

The sheep were ready for shearing.

Gerald came to shear them.

Courtney helped pack down the wool that the shearer took home.

I was encouraged to take fleeces. "Oh, but I'm moving to Canada!" I said. Fleeces came home with me anyhow. White Romney....

Black/sunburnt tipped Romney/Border Leicester cross wool

Gray Romney

By the time I got home, I'd come back to my senses and realized I wouldn't have time to wash these before moving. I skirted them and packaged them up. The post office was busy on a Tuesday after Memorial Day! A little less than 40lbs later, I had no more raw fleeces. They were on the sheep Tuesday morning, and in the mail Tuesday afternoon.

Unfortunately, the farmer also wasn't feeling well. I just got back from visiting him in the hospital...he left the farm to go to the doctor just after I went home. What normally would have been a wonderful time on the farm is now bittersweet. If you liked that chapter of a farm on sheep shearing day in my book, remember the man in the red suspenders? Please send a few healing thoughts in his direction. (and thanks in advance...)

PS: I love every single comment you've written lately! I'm so sorry that I'm too overwhelmed to write back to every one just now. The first moving estimate was today--tomorrow? two more. Just keeping my head above water over here.