[Deere]

Hey everyone,

I've got some fleece and I'm after someone to turn it into wool as a present for my mother.

It's the first year I've had my own flock of sheep and it's wool from my first clip so I was wondering if anyone knows anyone that could "magic" one of my fleeces into some useable wool as I know my mother would love the idea.

I'm based in Derbyshire but could deliver or post it.

If anyone has any ideas please feel free to message me or if anyone here would be willing to take up the challenge let me know, I'd be glad to hear from you with a price you'd be happy to do it for.

Look forward to your replies

[Lesley Silvester]

It sounds like a wonderful idea. I'm not an experienced enough spinner to take on something like this but I'm sure there are people around who would be interested. If you don't get a response on here, I suggest you register with Ravelry and put something in the UK spinners and UK classified sections.


What sort of sheep are they?

[Deere]

Good evening MG of M!

Thanks for the info, if I don't get any further help here I will certainly take your advice.

I have some white Ryelands, some Welsh black cross Suffolks and some mule cross Charolais.

Was probably thinking the wool from one of the Ryelands would be nice but I would ask advice on that too!

[Anke]

Unfortunately it is a quite a job to turn a single fleece into a jumper... ,and most of us spinners knitters etc on here have our own, ever growing stash of raw fleece in the garage waiting to be sorted, washed, carded, spun, plied, dyed, dried again and then finally knitted (and if unlucky we have to frog it all and start afresh... the knitting that is).

Most of us also have our own sheep and assorted other livestock... just saying that most of us are simply too busy!

[BALLOCH]

There e quite a few woollen mills that will process your wool for you and turn it from fleece to wool,saying that be prepared for a hefty bill it isn't cheap.A friend got 4 Shetland fleeces done all individual and it cost him£350 he did end up with quite a lot of balls of wool it took 6 months for the mill to process too ,so they are busy.I spin but it takes me a couple of hours to spin approx, 100g into a arron type weight,that doesn't include the washing carding process just to give you a idea.Take up spinning your self its very addictive tho, so watch out.Good luck ,if you want a mill just google on the computer there are several .

[jaykay]

Ha, Anke describes the situation exactly!

SallyintNorth recently ran a 'sheep to shawl' event - the fleece was washed beforehand, I wonder if she could work out how many of us, and therefore how many 'people hours' there were involved in the carding, spinning and knitting - it was a lot! 

And as Balloch says, you can get a mill do it all, and give you knitting yarn, but it costs. The 'Halifax' mill, which is near Selby(!) is certainly behind and taking months to get anything done, I don't know if others are be bad?

[SallyintNorth]

SallyintNorth recently ran a 'sheep to shawl' event - the fleece was washed beforehand, I wonder if she could work out how many of us, and therefore how many 'people hours' there were involved in the carding, spinning and knitting - it was a lot! 

I just wrote this up on Rusty's thread:

We made a shawl in a day at Wool on the Wall

Between the carding, spinning, knitting (we used singles, so no plying) and stitching up, we reckon it took 140-150 hours work 'from sheep to shawl'.

That was at max speed, no plying, using large knitting needles so it knitted up fast.

One of the key things will be the kind of fleece you can get.  Some need very little prep, some need combing or carding, or more.  If you can find some that will spin directly from opened locks you will save a heck of a lot of time.

I can name 40 people who participated, and there would have been a few I didn't capture - there was spinning, spindling and knitting going on all over the village!

[SallyintNorth]

And here's a lovely pic of one of the spinners spinning

[jaykay]

Ha, it wasn't until I saw your pics that I realised how tired I'd got at the end of term - talk about bags under the eyes! (and mucky fingernails in that closeup, but I'm more resigned to those)

[Lesley Silvester]

Great photos, Sally.

[SallyintNorth]

Well I guess I should share the one that made the front page then linky - only the top left corner with 'turn to page 5', but it was still on the front page!  lol

[Bionic]

Is that you Sally? Lovely pic

[SallyintNorth]

Me in the green pinny.  Smiley spinner is jaykay

[Lesley Silvester]

Funny how people never look the way you expect them to.

[SallyintNorth]

Funny how people never look the way you expect them to.

No, the never do!