Free Fleece - Icelandic Lamb

I have a philosophy about wool that goes something like this:
"All wool is good wool, but not all wool is good for spinning."  All wool is, ultimately, usable.  That may mean that it can be spun and used for luxury fabrics, made into yarn for hats, mittens, or blankets, felted into fine scarves or clothing, stuffed into quilts, used for making brake pads, or, as a last resort, used for mulching the plants in the garden or getting chucked into the compost pile.  

I can no longer count the number of times I have been offered free fleece and how often those free fleeces have mulched plants or been chucked into the compost because they were unsuitable for anything else.  The fleece shown above has a happier ending, and this is its story.  

There is a lovely yarn shop near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, called Studio S.  It's located on an odd, triangular intersection near a formerly infamous restaurant called the Duck Inn (a well-documented Chicago Mafia hangout in earlier days) and across the street from the Staller Estate Winery which produces some quite nice white wines.   The combination of local history, a drive in the nearby countryside, and a chance to indulge in two of our interests (wine and fiber) at the same location, makes it an ideal day trip.

Late last fall, I was asked by the owner of the shop if I would test out two of their spinning wheels and get them up and running.  I returned in January with my wheel tune up kit in hand to give the wheels a check up and test drive.  In return for my efforts, I was given a grocery bag full of about two pounds of Icelandic lamb fleece.

Icelandic sheep are raised by a number of shepherds here in Wisconsin.  They do quite well in cold weather, which we have in abundance here.  They also come in a nearly-infinite variety of colors, sometimes several colors in one sheep, which makes each fleece unique.

Icelandic Sheep  - photo from Heart's Ease Farm

Icelandic sheep have two coats - a coarser, outer coat called tog, which repels water and snow, and a very fine, soft under coat called thiel, which keeps the sheep warm.  In their way, they are very much like double-coated Shetland sheep, from which we get the lace shawls, durable Shetland sweaters, and tweed jackets many of us are familiar with.  Those who are fans of the Lord of the Rings films will have seen handspun Icelandic wool used to create the hobbit cloaks.

Depending on the qualities of the fleece and the needs of the spinner, the two coats of adult Icelandic sheep can be spun together or separately.  Icelandic lamb, on the other hand, is another thing entirely.  It's incredibly soft and silky all the way through, and since the outer coat hasn't developed fully, there is no coarseness to contend with and no need to separate the two coats.  Which brings me back to free fleeces and the grocery bag of Icelandic fleece I was rewarded with.

Free fleeces are often full of hay, chaff, sheep "berries," and burrs.  It is a sad truth that a substantial number of people who breed sheep and expect to sell the fleeces to spinners have no idea how to avoid this problem while the fleece is growing or how to take out the yucky bits once the fleece has been sheared off the sheep.  Such was the case with this Icelandic lamb.  It was full of crud of all kinds.  It was also so very lovely, though, that I decided to try to clean it up rather than use it for mulch, as I would have done with almost anything else.  The fleece had been sitting in the closet since January, and I finally decided to deal with it yesterday.

The photo at the top of this page shows the fleece fresh out of the bag.  It's full of vegetable matter and all of the other "gifts" of the field.  For the majority of the morning, I picked through the fleece, lock by lock, taking out every bit of undesirable matter.  The photo below shows the fleece after its initial cleaning but before washing.  I had only managed to save about half of the fleece, but all the good stuff was there.

I piled the fleece into a mesh bag and gave it two wash/soaks and three rinses.  What a difference!  The end result is a little over a pound of  clean, lustrous, creamy white, cloud soft Icelandic lamb that rivals Merino fleece for softness, and the yarn will be warm as toast.  In the end, it was well worth the time and effort.  My hand cards are itching to card it up for spinning. 

It doesn't happen a lot, but sometimes free wool is a very good thing.