Sourcing some unwashed wool yarn

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Lou

Settler
Feb 16, 2011
631
70
the French Alps
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I have been trying to source some already spun, yet unwashed yarn, i.e. the stuff straight off the sheep, complete with lanolin intact. I want to knit myself a jumper which has some waterproof properties to it. I would prefer a 4 ply yarn which is finer than the classic Aran sweater weight as it provides that protection but is easier to pack down and carry. I just cannot seem to find anywhere that sells it on the internet, I am thinking that I need to go to a smaller outlet which is perhaps not on the internet. Does anyone know of a reliable source? Thanks
 

Lou

Settler
Feb 16, 2011
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the French Alps
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Ask Toddy.

Oil in wool is still has to have the sheep poo and pee washed out. I made myself a small section of really really rubbish homespun oil in wool, it acted like neoprene.

Yeah, I have done some experiments with my own spinning too but I know that if you select the best part of the fleece (not from underneath) the dirt can be carded out quite successfully and of course it will always smell like a sheep :) if not ever washed. I have seen old Aran jumpers that have been made with unwashed wool and they are interesting to say the least, they remain water (shower) proof as long as they are not immersed in hot water and cleaned. The wool is not anything like our modern soft machine washable wool of course, it is stiffer, more like a 'worsted' and smells of lanolin. The tightness of the spinning and the stitches in the knit also help to keep the water out.

I am not sure what the result would be if I was to make a sweater out of this stuff, it could be unwearable, but I would really like to try :)
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
Tawnyhare, after being the one bagging all the fleeces at shearing time I know and hate the smell of unwashed wool. Your skin was lovely and soft but I found it hard to totally get rid of the smell in a hurry. If you want to go around smelling like that lovely but don't expect many friends to share close proximity around a camp fire as you slowly steam and moulder. I've used oiled wool jumper and loved their water resistant qualities but I believe the wool was re-oiled after washing. Indeed you can buy lanolin from the chemist to wash into wool clothing (at a push I've used a couple of capfuls of babyoil.
There's a farm not far from Killin which a friend used for wool for spinning that I could try and get details for you? Though Toddy will probably know it.

ATB,
GB.
 

Lou

Settler
Feb 16, 2011
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the French Alps
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Ok, re-oiling sounds like a better idea, in that case, it shouldn't be too hard to get the wool in the first place and then buy the lanolin. In addition, I guess you can keep re-oiling it whenever you need to. I wonder if those ancient shetlanders and aran islanders also washed their wool first to separate out the lanolin and then re-oiled it? It would be interesting to find a resource about ancient wool preparation techniques and if it is anything like preparing buckskin or leather, it probably was a very in depth process, I wonder if that knowledge has been lost to us now?
 

treadlightly

Full Member
Jan 29, 2007
2,692
3
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Powys
I have washed lanolin into wool and don't mind the smell. However this idea is a different thing again. A jumper made of unwashed wool sounds very interesting. Good luck Tawnyhare.
 

boatman

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Feb 20, 2007
2,444
4
77
Cornwall
We were given a load of sheep's fleeces recently. Have washed and picked the poo from one. I discarded a lot of wool as inoperable. Getting some carders and will try carding the best of a fresh fleece first before washing. Friend of ours spins for herself from the untreated but carded fleeces and finds this works well. Doesn't help the OP I am afraid but my best advice is to get the fleeces from a small-scale sheep-keepers would throw away and do it yourself.
 

Elen Sentier

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Yeah, I have done some experiments with my own spinning too but I know that if you select the best part of the fleece (not from underneath) the dirt can be carded out quite successfully and of course it will always smell like a sheep :) if not ever washed. I have seen old Aran jumpers that have been made with unwashed wool and they are interesting to say the least, they remain water (shower) proof as long as they are not immersed in hot water and cleaned. The wool is not anything like our modern soft machine washable wool of course, it is stiffer, more like a 'worsted' and smells of lanolin. The tightness of the spinning and the stitches in the knit also help to keep the water out.

I am not sure what the result would be if I was to make a sweater out of this stuff, it could be unwearable, but I would really like to try :)

Yes, I do this, take from the best of the fleece, it cards up nicely then I spin, it works well. Am currently doing it with some lovely black-lamb-Gotland. Just spun the first batch and it feels good, now got to spin the second and ply, see how it is then. See where you can get untreated fleeces and give it a go yourself.
 

Elen Sentier

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
We were given a load of sheep's fleeces recently. Have washed and picked the poo from one. I discarded a lot of wool as inoperable. Getting some carders and will try carding the best of a fresh fleece first before washing. Friend of ours spins for herself from the untreated but carded fleeces and finds this works well. Doesn't help the OP I am afraid but my best advice is to get the fleeces from a small-scale sheep-keepers would throw away and do it yourself.

You always need to "skirt" the fleece :) . I use the discarded, dung-filled fleece on the garden as an over winter mulch. It works to keep the soil good, unbatterred by rain, warmer, and the rain washes the dung into the veg garden which is good. When I take it up for spring planting it goes into the compost and improves that very well. No waste!
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
It's one of those minefields because sheep flocks are endemic with e-coli, and it's the bad one :sigh:
So those who work with wool, sell wool, etc., don't sell unwashed wool if they have folks best wishes to heart.

If you skirt and remove the dags from a fleece and put that into a big bucket of water and just leave it alone, it'll make a brilliant fertilizer until the gunk has all decayed and dissolved. Then you can just remove and wash and use the wool as normal. Wool does very well wet.

I don't like this idea of using the wool on the garden because all that does is allow the moth larvae that eat wool to feed well and produce more wee moths.......and eventually all those hungry moths will find your carefully spun and woven stuff indoors too :(

Anyway, its not hard to wash wool, it's supposed to be washed, the sheep produces stuff called suint, like wee flakes of greasy dandruff, that when soaked helps lift the dirt out of it's fleece. Just soaking the fleece in water will remove a tremendous amount of gunk just by letting the suint do it's work. That's how fleece was prepared in the past. Only if it was to be dyed did it get a wash with ammonia in the water. Ammonia is a brilliant de-greaser, and the fleece needs to be de-greased to dye it unless you're using alkanet. There's always a smell after any of these processes though.

To remove the worst of the miasma of sweaty sheep..... Shampoo is meant for hair, wool is just a crinkly hair, shampoo, just cheap generic supermarket 1ltr for £1 stuff works fine. Soak, don't scrub, rinse, rinse, and peg out in chunks to air dry. Store in old pillowslips or linen bags.

Re-lanolinising is easy, but the lanolin always has a smell. Most people use baby oil or such like for indoor clothing these days. It works, doesn't damage the fibres, doesn't (generally) irritate our skins even if it's not as natural as the lanolin.

Best of luck with it, interested to hear how you get on.

Somewhere I have handspun v. dark brown St. Kilda fleece, not enough for a jumper, I gave up trying to knit it (and if you've ever handspun enough 3ply worsted yarn for a jumper and given up, you'll understand how frustrated I was) as an aran and ended up knitting socks with some of it. There's certainly enough left for more socks, a hat and mitts though.

cheers,
Toddy
 

Macaroon

A bemused & bewildered
Jan 5, 2013
7,209
362
73
SE Wales
I've re-lanolised several woolen items over the past few months with great success using Anhydrous Lanolin from ebay, takes a while to melt it into the warm water but I just do that the night before......I've not had any issues with the smell of that and have not had comments by folk in the town about the smell, either.

I've had almost magic results doing this with M&S 100% wool trousers bought for peanuts in the charrys; they're not much good for outdoors as they come but twice through the re-lanolising bath and they transform completely to extremely tough and comfortable trews for the woods.................atb mac
 

Lou

Settler
Feb 16, 2011
631
70
the French Alps
twitter.com
Thanks Toddy, that is all so interesting, I def. do NOT want to be wearing raw wool against my skin with all that going on! So, re-lanolinising is the thing to go for. This is great as I hv some skeins of wool I can knit up, natural dye and then re-oil. I will look on eBay for that lanolin Macaroon, looks like that could be the ticket. Thanks.
 

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