During the winter (and its feeling wintery today in Shetland!) of course things slow down a bit on the Wool side of J&S but we carry on with the job of sorting the graded fleeces, white and coloured. Shetland Wool is known for having different grades in one fleece and it is this time of year we can take the time to separate out the best of them.
Oliver is taking each fleece and looking for certain things within them - the handle, the character and fibre fineness to name a few. You often find spinners looking for the crimp of a Shetland fleece and this is one of the things we are looking for. The best of all these things together make for the finest results in Spinning.
The finest fleeces have a lack of Guard Hair, the courser fibres which bring down the grade. By hand sorting you can remove and ensure the overall fineness of the fleeces. This exquisite Shawl of Sandra's shows an example of how fine Shetland Yarn can be hand spun.
As well as the white fleeces, which is obviously the most common in Shetland, we are also lucky to have many of Shetland's crofters come to us with their coloured fleeces. (I did a post a while ago about the Natural Colours which you can see
here) These are crucial because they allow us to have a number of ranges using only the Natural Shades.
1 and 2ply Supreme Lace and
Shetland Supreme Jumper Weight. We also have something new coming soon using the Undyed colours so keep an eye out for that..
So although the green doors are shut there are plenty of things going on behind them! And if your interested in Olivers hat there will be a pattern coming soon..
Happy Knitting!
