All the Pretty Fleece - Romney

I have a love of Romney, especially the fleeces from the Romneys my dear friend Shirley DeMaris raises. To me she has the best ones out there, I think part of it is because I find her little blocky teddy bear faced sheeps the cutest ever.

Shirley and one of her rams at the Shaniko wool gathering.

This fleece was grown by Maxine.

This is a lovely wavy soft silky silver gray fleece.

This fleece was much greasier than the last one that I did. So after a couple of cold water washes to get the dirt off I did a hot water wash with a tiny bit of original blue Dawn dish soap. Then I did a hot water rinse with a good glug of white vinegar. The vinegar helps return the wool to its proper ph and leaves it softer than it would be without it. How can I tell when its clean is a common question, well the simple answer is you can feel it. A fleece will be tacky to the touch if it has a bunch of grease in it.

You can see the yellow of the grease in this picture of the wool before washing.

This fleece has a nice soft silky handle. I can't wait to spin it up.

*Update*

Oh man how this fleece begs to be yarn, it hopped right onto the bobbin and just spun like straw into gold. You don't have to be Rumpelstiltskin to make magical yarn with this wool. I got a bit more technical this round. First I weighed out the washed wool, .5 oz for each yarn.

Getting fancy now!

Then I combed one batch, I even weighed the waste wool. It wouldn't register as ounces so I had to switch to grams. I only lost 3 grams to waste. I struggle a bit with the conversions so I have a handy converter app on my phone. 0.5 oz is equal to 13 grams, so a loss of 3 grams isn't too bad.

Lovely nests of combed top.

Then I carded the other batch of washed wool, this gave me .5 oz of carded fluffy rolags.

Fluffy carded rolags begging to be spun.

Then came the hardest decision, what to spin this lovely fleece on.... well I decided to pull out the wheel I learned to spin on. My first wheel is a Country Craftsman, and this is what she lives for. This wheel loves to spin fast and really makes spinning long wools fun. I like to compare this wheel to a well trained hot blooded horse, you can't be lazy and half doze off while spinning on her. You must make constant adjustments as your bobbin fills.

I fondly call her my Lady.

Once spun you can once again see the difference in the way carded and combed fibers lay in the finished yarn. As before the carded fibers make a more open lofty yarn and the combed fibers make a smooth shinny yarn. This fleece could very easily be used either way, I like the way both yarns came out.

Carded on top, combed on bottom

Now why I weighed them to begin with. I noticed last time a difference in yardage I got out of roughly the same amount of fiber. This time I made sure that the starting weights where as close as I could possibly make them. I got 53 yards of yarn out of the .5 oz  when I carded the fiber and I got 61 yards out of slightly less than .5 oz when I combed the fiber. So if you want to get the most out of your Romney fleece don't worry about the waste you get when using combs.