Script for

Episode 133:

Buying Fleece with Beth Smith

Hi there, beloved Sheepspotter. I'm taking a little break from creating new episodes right now, but today I am sharing a segment from my very first spinning podcast, Spin Doctor, for your listening pleasure. In this episode from 2010, I interview Beth Smith about buying fleeces. Beth no longer owns the Spinning Loft, but I do recommend that you pick up her book, The Spinner's Book of Fleece.

It's an essential for any spinner's library. I hope you enjoy the episode. Next up, our first ever Spin Doctor interview.

For today's episode, I interviewed Beth Smith, the owner of the Spinning Loft in Howell, Michigan, and an inveterate buyer of fleeces, you could say. It's her job to buy fleeces, on selecting and washing a fleece. Beth has published articles about spinning in Knitty and Spinoff, as well as a pattern in Knitty, and is rumored to be working on a book.

You'll find links to her articles and to the Spinning Loft in the show notes. A couple of notes before I start the interview about things that come up during it. At one point, I refer to Beth as the Longwool's Avenger.

This is a reference to her avatar on Ravelry and also to her secret identity as a defender of truth, justice, the American way, and longwool sheep breeds. In our discussion on washing fleece, she refers to what she calls tool sausages. And you can find out more about how to preserve the lock structure while washing raw fleeces.

She wraps them in pieces of tullel in her Knitty article on the same topic. And of course, there will be a link. Also, I'm not allowed to mention the R word, Rhinebeck, because Beth can't go this year.

So I think that's all you need to know. Here's the interview. We know that spinners tend to be, especially new spinners, tend to be a little attached to the merino.

Yeah. Yeah. So what breeds should people be looking at for their first fleece, for buying their first fleece? Generally, people who are buying their first fleece don't have tools.

Okay. And the tools can be expensive. You know, hand cards are like $70, between $70 and $80.

Combs, you know, can go from a hundred and whatever, all the way up to a million. Right. So what I recommend to somebody who wants to buy their first fleece is to get something that they can flick.

Okay. So though we do love the Longwools, that's probably not the best place to start because the combs are expensive and carding and flicking are not the best choices for a longwool fleece. Also, I prefer them to stay away from the very fine stuff.

Merino, Cuomo, just because it's easily nepped. And they're kind of a pain to wash because it takes a lot of washing. Right.

To get, you know, really hot water and several washes and several rinses. And then, you know, the felting could possibly happen. So I like to go towards something more medium.

And if you like the fine area, then Corriedale definitely is a place to go, which almost every spinning teacher is going to say, Corriedale, Corriedale, Corriedale. Corriedale's nice. You've got that good crimp that you get from the fine wools.

But also it's, you know, it also felt, but it's not as delicate. So anything with a staple length of between three and five inches and anything kind of in the medium range. And any of the downbreeds, I love the downbreeds, Suffolk and um, uh, look, they've left my brain.

You know, those kinds of fleeces. Okay. So Corriedale or one of the downbreeds.

Yeah. Something in the middle there. I don't, you know, lots of people get sucked in by the Shetland, but unless you know what you're getting with Shetland, like Shetland can be a dual coated breed or a single coat.

So there's lots of dual coated ones. Those are the more primitive ones. Then it's harder to flick because you've got those two coats that you're working with.

It's nicer if you separate it and process the two coats separately. It's like a whole thing. So dual coated, even though I love Icelandic and Shetland and those kinds of leases still, I'm saying, no, don't do it.

Okay. Okay. Well that, that all makes sense.

What if, what if they're going to have it commercially processed? Are there other breeds that, I mean, does that open up more options in terms of breeds? Yes. Oh. And also a first fleece, a good one is like a Romney.

Is a Romney. Okay. Yeah.

If you're going to have it processed again with the fine wools, you need to be careful because there are processors that do a really great job with the fine wools and some that do not do a really great job or you don't have predictable results. So Cormo is one that I, the only way I would get that processed at certain places was if I was going to get combed top, because what happens in the carding is you get a huge amount of neps in the combing at the end, all those neps are removed. You get all those neps in a bag.

What the crap are you going to do with them? I mean, you can, there's stuff you can dye them and put them in bats and all kinds of things that you can do with those neps, but you get a huge amount of waste first from the washing and then from the carding, you lose a huge amount. And so for a first fleece, if you're going to have it processed, Cormo, uh, Marino, for some reason, doesn't get neppy as easily as Cormo, but still can get neppy. So unless you know, somebody who knows where to find a fleece process, like, you know, you know, because you talk to your Cormo girl and she said, Oh no, don't go here.

You probably should go over here because they're better at processing this kind of fleece. So again, in the medium range, it's good. Then if you go back to the dual coated breeds, when you blend fibers, the final result is only as soft as your coarsest fiber, right? So you can't add soft fiber to coarse fiber and think it's going to make it softer.

It'll make it more halo-y. It might add a little bit of a texture that you want, but you're still getting that coarseness. So if you take a dual coated breed that has the coarse guard hairs, and then that really downy undercoat, that is beautiful, process it all together, you get lopey, right? I mean, that's what it is, Icelandic, that's processed all together.

So, you know, you need to think about this when you send it to the processor. Maybe you want to get it de-haired. You still get all that.

You get everything back. You just get two bags. One has the soft downy, beautiful stuff and the other stuff you can dye.

It's really nice. It's strong. You can make tassels.

You can make edgings. You can make carpet stuff with it. So you can use it all.

But if you're looking for something to make a thong out of, you know, you've got to think about your processing. Because those knitted thongs, they're taken off. They're exploding in popularity.

You know, I'm waiting for somebody to make me one. You know, I don't know if you really want to say that on the podcast, because you'll get a knitted thong, I'm predicting. Anyway,

Well, I think, okay, then I'm going to put this in there. If somebody's going to make me a knitted thong, though I love long wool, I don't think I would like one made out of Lincoln. It's so tiny.

Okay, I'm glad we've established that. Okay, one more breed question. What about getting long wools processed? A BFL or a Wensleydale or... Talk about those long wools that you love so well.

Oh, long wools Avenger? I love them. I love them so much. BFL is going to be a shorter staple than many of them.

So, you know, you can have that process just like everything else. In the process, you have to decide, do you want this to be top or roving? The thing is, it's really easy to find BFL top. So maybe you want to get BFL roving.

Maybe you want something that you can spin a lot fluffier and airier and make this beautiful scarf out of that you don't get that same product out of the top. It's hard to find BFL roving. So think about that.

What's available on the market? And what do I really want to do with this? I've had Wensleydale processed into roving and it's beautiful. It's really nice. I mean, I love spinning worsted.

I love hand combing. I love spinning off the comb. I love using a diz.

I love all of that. And my go-to way of spinning is short forward draw. But every long wool that you see that's commercial is top because that's really the way to go because it's long.

And if you have it processed into roving, you lose some of that luster and probably some of the drape that you like from those heavier wools. So you can go any way with it. But like, if you're going to get like a tease water, a Cotswold fleece, lots of times those are really long, right? You're buying a fleece that's 10 or 12 inches staple length.

Do not get that into roving because the carter will just tear it up. It'll just, it'll be a mess. So those kinds of things, I almost always process by hand.

Okay. Next question. Yeah.

So independent of the specific breed, what do you look for in a fleece? What makes you all, what makes your heart go pity pat in a, in a fleece? And I know it happens because I've seen it. That's a hard question because I love them all. The first thing I look for is how long is the lock? You know, is this something that I'm going to be able to process by hand or should it be sent to the mill? I mean, some of the shorter, shorter fibers, just annoying to process by hand, unless you're going to hand cart at all, which I like combing.

Although I'm, you know, I don't know. I could do it. I like it all, but I'm not afraid of VM.

Lots of spinners, current spinners that haven't been spinning very long. I mean, I haven't been spinning very long myself, only about 10 years. Lots of new spinners though, are really focused on getting the cleanest fleece.

They're looking for a coated fleece because they don't want to deal with any of that VM. I am not as concerned about that. A coated fleece, lots of times will have, um, felting at the tips, a bit of a weak tip.

They're a little bit greasier than a non-coated fleece because the, and the sheep is sweating a lot more because, you know, he's got an extra coat on him. And so coated fleeces are not the thing that I run to. There are some shepherds who coat their fleeces, but the fleeces are such great quality.

I buy them every year because I know the quality of the fleece and I'm not going there just because it's coated. I'm going there because I know that it's the fleece that I love. And, and they've, they really take care of their sheep.

I make sure there's no breaks or weak spots. And how do you do that? If you take a lock in your hand, not a huge amount of fleece, a lock, usually like the thickness of your thumb and, and like snap it. If you snap it next to your ear, you'll hear like a ping.

If it's, if it sounds like a thud, it's not necessarily a strong fiber. If it pings, that's a good sign. Also, sometimes if you just pull it, you can hear some ripping.

There could be like, you could see a break in it where maybe the sheep got sick. Maybe she had a lamb and that changes their fleece for a short time. Maybe the food change.

Maybe there was some weather issue. Lots of things can affect the fleece and they've got this. Most shepherds are shearing twice a year.

So lots of things that can go wrong in like a six to eight month period while that fleece is growing. And though I'm not worried about BM, if there's too much, like huge chunks of hay, sometimes that gets a little tiring to deal with. Mm hmm.

So some BM, I don't care. Lots of BM where it looks like the shepherd was feeding over the sheep's back and everything's down in there and it's a mess. Then I kind of will pass by that, except in certain situations.

Okay. There are certain breeds which are hard to find as very clean fleeces. The down breeds are one of those down.

One category it's hard because most people who are growing Suffolk and Dorset and that kind of category of sheep are doing them for meat. They're shearing those sheep. They're getting rid of the wool.

They send them away with the shearer. They don't care about the fleece. So it's not going to be a clean fleece.

Sometimes there's going to be spray paint on those sheep. The thing is, if I'm looking for a specific breed and it's very hard to find it, then I'll take some extra crap in there and deal with it because I want to process that one. I want to see what that fleece is like.

But there's no reason for the ones that are really popular to deal with a huge amount of junk in it. Okay. Also, I like a fleece that's more skirted.

Don't buy poop because buying, you're paying by weight. So make sure that that's a well skirted fleece. Don't be afraid.

You don't want to mess the fleece up because usually it's folded in a certain way in the bag. Don't just look at what are they showing at the top. Anybody who's trying to sell something is going to put the nicest stuff at the top, right? And then you get down to the bottom of the bag and you have three pounds of poop.

So put your hand in there and make sure that everything's clean and feels all good. When you see a fleece that you think, oh my God, that is such a fabulous fleece, what is it about that fleece that's saying that to you? Is it that it's an extremely good example of its breed or is there a more generic thing that says excellent fleece to you? Because each breed is so different from each other, that's a hard question because every single one has something different. And with the longwools I'm looking for, does it have that luster that I love? Does it have the nice crimp structure and Lansleydale? I want it to be silky feeling when I touch it.

And Romney, I want to have that lovely crimp and I'd like it to be very similar all over the fleet. What makes you walk away from a fleece or actually what makes you run away from a fleece? You've sort of gotten an initial look and you think that, oh, that looks sort of interesting, but then what can you discover about a fleece upon closer inspection that's just going to make you think, oh, no way. Well, like I said, big chunks of hay, lots of junk in the fleece.

Just, I don't know, there's something you can see in the fleece and know the sheep was well cared for. Or is it just kind of like they just go throw food at it and walk away? Yeah, just weak, weak fleece. Weak tips are not a big deal because you can just pull those off while you're processing.

That's not a huge deal, but any kind of a break in the middle of a lock is kind of a no way. I actually still have it. I have an Icelandic fleece and it has this huge break and I didn't look close enough before I bought this fleece and got it back home and went, and the reason I bought it was because it was a really beautiful black and white spotted fleece and it wasn't anything that I had in the store and the lock length was great and everything about this fleece looked beautiful, but I didn't take a lock and really look at it before I bought this fleece.

So tell us about washing fleece. I know that you're a published author on this topic. So how do you wash a fleece that, where you want to preserve the lock structure and how do you wash a fleece where you don't care so much about the lock structure? Or do you always, do you always care about the lock structure? No, I rarely care about the lock structure.

I care about the lock structure if it's a fine fleece and I'm going to flick it. So I got Knitty, you know, Knitty. I love Knitty.

But there's an article and I don't even remember when it was. Was it last summer? I'll put a link to it. Last spring? I don't remember.

Anyway, it shows about making the tulle sausages and I just use bridal netting. Actually, I used to be a dressmaker and I used to make wedding gowns. Yeah.

And so I have this bolt of bridal tulle, like bridal veil stuff, but I'm still using that to wash wool. And so you can use that, you know, the netting that you use under dresses, like for crinoline, that probably works, that works just as well and might even be better because it'll let more of the dirt out easier. It'll breathe a little better.

And that stuff is cheap and you can reuse it over and over. So that I line all the locks up. Nothing's more than like an inch thick.

I don't do a more than an inch thick. And they're, you know, I don't know, 18 inches long. Roll up the ends and put a pin.

Sometimes I put a pin in the middle to hold it all together. And I just use for all of my washing, everything I wash, I wash in a dish pan, you know, like, you know, a dish pan, dish pan, everything. I never wash more than a pound at a time.

Okay. The biggest fleeces are generally not more than 10 pounds. So, you know, you can wash, you can go through it pretty fast.

I've done Corridale that way, but it's less necessary. Cormo, Merino are the ones that I really focus on wrapping up that way. Okay.

Maybe something like Columbia, the rare, the fine, fine crimp fleeces, the, just because those fibers move around a lot and it's just easy to get knots and things. And I just like to have them all set up in sausages. Otherwise I fill my dish pan with hot water, as hot as I can get it out of the tap.

I can't tell you what the temperature is. It's hot. You know, I can't stick my hand in it.

I fill it up. I use Power Scour. I've tried every kind of washing wool soap that there is on the market.

I've tried them all and Dawn, which a lot of people swear by because they say it's cheap. The thing with Dawn is it's really sudsy. And so you need a lot more rinses.

Right. So Dawn is cheap, but you need to put a lot more in than you do of the Power Scour and you have to do a lot more rinses. Power Scour, this is a commercial for Power Scour.

This is my experience because I've tried the Kookaburra, which was fine, but not my favorite. And then other stuff, you know, I've used Soak and Eucalon and all those, but no, they're not. I mean, they'll work, but more washes then.

So that's what I love about Power Scour is I'm putting a full pump into the first wash, a half a pump into the second wash and two rinses and it's done. I'm not letting it sit there forever. Well, sometimes I do.

And that's just because I walked away and forgot it was there. But generally it's not necessary to let it sit there forever, you know, 15 minutes or 20 minutes and then dump it and put it in the next water because you don't want the water to get cool because then all that grease that you just melted off and is in the water is going to run back to the fibers. So it was kind of a waste of time, except you got some dirt off, but all that grease is still back on there.

So I think one of the problems that people who are trying this for the first time have is they let it sit too long in the water. And then, you know, at the end when your fleece is dry and you still have that sticky feeling, they just let it sit too long. Like the rinses, I don't let it in the first rinse.

It sits maybe five minutes. The last rinse, I just put it in and take it out and it's done because I don't want to spend a lot of time. And I can't imagine they spent a huge amount I'm in the mill letting this fleece sit around in the water trying to soak everything off.

The other thing is about washing. I'm not as... I want to use a word, but I don't know if it's an appropriate word. Well, give it a try.

I'm not anal about making sure that every speck of dirt is out. So my last rinse is, it's the water's clear-ish, but not, no, clean, clean water because now it's mostly clean. Now you're going to spin it.

You're going to wash it again. Then you're going to make something out of it. You're going to wash it again.

So it gets at least two more washes before anybody's wearing it, at least. So forget it. I'm not going to wash it and wash it and wash it until the water's completely clear.

So, and you know, I'm an environmentally friendly girl. Well, also more stuff is going to come out in the combing and the carding too. And so there's that as well.

I mean, yeah. So I don't worry about it. You could drive yourself crazy with the washing.

You could. And some people who have a tendency to go overboard in situations like that might think about possibly asking someone else to wash their stuff. Okay.

Okay. Liz, you heard it from Beth Smith. If you're going to go crazy with the OCD washing, get somebody else to do it for you.

So Beth Smith, is there anything else you want to tell us about going shopping for your first fleece, possibly at that place that we won't mention that begins with R because we're not talking about Ryan Beck. You just said it. Here's what I have to say about that.

This is going to be profound. Okay. Anybody can give you all the advice that you want.

You can ask people all day. I watch people, sometimes people on Ravelry even, you know, they're going to this forum and they're going to this forum and they're going to this group and they're asking all these people the same question over and over. They're asking 500,000 people.

And here's what I have to say. Just try it for crying out loud because what's the big deal? You know what you wash a pound.

You felt it. Try the next pound and see if you do better. It's not going to kill anybody.

Nobody's life is at stake and the sheep are growing more. So it's fine. Yeah.

You know, there's going to be more fleece tomorrow. The only thing that will stop the fleece. Well, see, I don't even know this.

If the zombie apocalypse comes, do they go after the sheep? I don't know. Huh. If the zombie apocalypse comes, do they go after the sheep? Wow.

Right. I know. Yeah.

Also, I'll give a little plug for my store. Okay. It is not necessary for you to go out and buy a 12 pound Cormo fleece and then worry about what you're going to do with the thing because that's like three sweaters worth of wool after you wash.

Right. You know, you could come over. You could buy eight ounces from the spinning loft. It'll be a lot less money outlaid you get a lovely shawl you know if you don't have to go or you know go with your friends and split a fleece because when you it's so fun to carry that huge bag of fleece out of the fair and then you get it home and you go oh what am I gonna do.

Yep oh my god i bought a 10 pound fleece what am i gonna do with it yeah you sound like your experience in that yes i have i've had that experience of well actually i let when i left maryland i had bought i picked up a seven pound corydale fleece that i had bought online that i that I picked up there. And then I bought another 10 pound Cormo Cory Del Cross. And so I'm walking around the Maryland Sheep and Wolf Festival with 17 pounds of fleece and thinking, I'm insane. You know, it'll take me two years to spend this.