Get wool ready to spin

Shear a sheep or comb a goat, wash the wool, and comb it fluffy and straight.

takes patience⏳ two daystradition — not yet hand-tested

Wool comes off the animal as a greasy, dirty mat. Between that mat and a warm sweater stand three simple jobs: get the wool off the animal, wash out the grease and dirt, and comb it fluffy and straight so it spins smoothly. None of this is hard. But one mistake — hot water plus rubbing — turns good wool into solid felt, so the whole art is gentleness.

Wool is worth it: it stays warm even when damp, and one sheep gives enough each year for a garment or two.

You need

• A woolly animal — a sheep, or a goat with a soft under-layer of fluff (that fluff is called cashmere on some goats). Sheep are cut; goats are usually combed.
• Shears or sharp scissors for a sheep. Slow scissors work fine for a beginner — they just take longer.
• A wide-toothed comb for a goat's loose spring fluff.
• Two big tubs or pots of water and a way to heat it to about 50–60 °C — a bit too hot to hold your hand in.
• Soap — plain soap, grated or dissolved. It cuts the wool grease.
• Two flat combs or brushes with many short teeth — stiff dog brushes work, or boards with rows of bent wire teeth (these are called carders). You can make rough ones with nails.
• A clean, dry place to spread wool — an old sheet in the sun.

Steps

1. Get the wool off the animal.
   • Sheep: shear in late spring, once nights are warm. Sit the sheep on its rump so it relaxes, and cut the fleece off close to the skin in long strokes, keeping the fleece in one blanket-like piece if you can. Take your time; calm hands make fewer nicks.
   • Goat: in spring the soft under-fluff loosens by itself. Comb the goat every few days and keep the fluff, discarding the long coarse hairs.
2. Sort the wool (this is called skirting). Spread the fleece and throw away the parts around the tail and legs — they are matted with dung — plus any wool full of seeds or burrs. Keep the clean back and side wool.
3. Wash the grease out.
   • Fill a tub with hot water (50–60 °C) and dissolve soap in it.
   • Lower the wool in gently and push it under once. Then do not stir, rub, or swish. Just let it sit 20–30 minutes.
   • Lift the wool out (don't pour water through it), press — never wring — the water out, and repeat in a second tub of clean hot water with no soap, to rinse.
   • Keep every bath about the same temperature. A sudden hot-to-cold shock felts wool just like rubbing does.
4. Dry it. Press the wool between cloths, then spread it loosely on a sheet in sun or breeze for half a day to a day.
5. Tease it. With clean dry wool, pull each handful apart with your fingers until it is open and airy, dropping out any dirt and short bits.
6. Comb or card it straight.
   • Put a thin layer of teased wool on the teeth of one carder. Stroke the second carder across it, lightly, again and again — brushing, not grinding the teeth together.
   • When every fiber lies smooth and the wool looks like a soft cloud, roll it gently off the teeth into a loose sausage of fluff (spinners call this a rolag).
7. Store the rolls loosely in a basket or cloth bag, dry and away from moths, until you spin.

Watch out

• Felting is the great enemy. Heat + soap + rubbing locks wool fibers together forever. Never scrub, wring, stir, or shock washed wool with a temperature change. If a batch felts, it won't spin — but felt itself is useful cloth, so keep it.
• Water too cool won't melt the grease — the wool stays sticky and hard to comb. Hotter than your hand can stand is right; boiling is too much.
• Cutting the same spot twice while shearing makes short useless fibers. Long strokes, one pass.
• Moths eat stored wool. Keep it dry, check it monthly, and store it with strong-smelling dried herbs like lavender or wormwood.
• Never wash a fleece before it's off the animal — wet sheep chill, and wet wool cuts badly.

How it works

Each wool fiber is covered in tiny overlapping scales, like a pine cone. Heat and rubbing make the scales latch onto each other — that's felting. The grease (called lanolin) melts at around 40–50 °C, which is why the wash water must be hot but the handling gentle: melt the grease, never engage the scales.