Trenchwork

Bond is a fine wool.  For those of you who don’t really know what that means, we don’t mean “fine” in the sense that it’s nice, as in “it’s a fine day,” “that’s fine, dear,” or “lawdy, lawdy, ain’t he fine?”   Rather, we mean that it’s a fine grade; it is a softer wool versus a coarser wool.  But it’s also fine.

The breed was developed in the early 1900s by crossing Peppin Merino ewes with Lincoln rams, then breeding back to Merino to regain the softness but not so much as to lose the Lincoln influence.  The end result is a fairly large sheep with a lovely lovely fleece.  The Merino gave its softness and low micron count, and the Lincoln influence gave a longer staple length, slightly more relaxed crimp and staple, and a tiny bit of luster.  So, the average staple length is closer to 5″, with roughly 7 crimps per inch, and the staple seems to normally be a bit blocky and dense rather than triangular or oval in shape.  The micron count for the breed falls between 22-28.  To put it in another way, it’s about the same softness as a medium Merino, but with a longer and more relaxed staple.

Let me show you a quick comparison:

Interesting, huh?

In this case, the Bond is from a ram named Thomas of Lowder Colour Farms.  The unwashed fleece looked like this:

The photo doesn’t do the color justice; the color in the samples photo above this one is on target, but that lock doesn’t have the golden tips which were in the fleece.

Because of the Merino influence, this is a fairly high-grease fleece and you can expect to lose between 30-45% of the weight in the wash, assuming you scour out all the grease.  In this case, I wanted to leave some of the lanolin in the fleece in order to play with longdraw spinning with the lanolin, but I found I left more than I wanted and had to give the fleece a second wash before I was willing to work with it.

/begin rant

And that, friends and neighbors, raises a point.  At repeated intervals, there is a discussion about spinning in the grease on the various fiber lists and forums, and I want to go on record as saying that there is a difference between spinning in the dirt and spinning in the grease.  Somehow, folks have gotten the idea that “spinning in the grease” means working with fleece just as it is, straight from the sheep.  There are those who like that experience, and that’s ok.  But I’m not one of them.  As Kate has said, sheep in general are not clean beasties.  And certainly they’re not self-grooming.  As a result, their fleece is full not only of suint (lanolin, sweat, body oils), but whatever they’ve come into contact with along the way—which includes everything from mud to poo, urine to dirt and sand, straw and chaff, seed and feed.  The fleece may look fairly clean if it doesn’t have a lot of VM (vegetable matter) in it and it’s not covered in dung tags, but the simple reality is that it is not.  And with all due respect to those who don’t mind dealing with that stuff, I don’t want to spin it into my yarn.  Contrary to what some folks say, it does not spin out or all come out in the wash when the yarn is washed and finished—particularly if you’ve spun a firm yarn, such as a worsted yarn and a yarn with multiple plies.

For me, I have to admit that it seems a matter of common sense.  I see what falls out of a fleece which has been washed and the lanolin removed; it’s amazing how much sand, dirt, and tiny pieces of VM there is even after you’ve thoroughly and a bit obsessively picked the fleece.  Most of it comes out in the processing, and the rest in the spinning as you work with the fiber.  But if the lanolin is retained, it behaves like glue and holds onto all the nastiness as well, which means that it is all trapped within the singles you’ve just spun.  Some will come out in the wash, but the process of sand and dirt working its way out over time is not exactly good for the yarn, and you know, I would rather not feel like Charlie Brown’s friend Pig-pen, leaving a trail of tiny granules and dirt on my clothes and elsewhere.

That’s what I call spinning in the dirt.  (And it helps that I’ve seen a few other folks use that phrase as well; at least I know I’m not alone there!)

But I do understand the love some folks have of spinning fleece which still has at least some degree of lanolin.  The lanolin works as an intensive treatment for your hands, the yarn plumps beautifully when it’s scoured in the finishing process, and the general wisdom is that it can make longdraw easier to spin thinner singles since it essentially forces the individual hairs to want to stick to one another, and thus draw out in a longer stream without falling apart quite so easily.

It is, however, possible to spin in the grease without spinning in the dirt:  wash the fleece.  That may sound contrary to the purpose, but it really isn’t; there are a dozen different ways to wash fleece, and there is no rule which says you have to wash in very hot water with lots of degreaser soap.  If you want to keep the lanolin, try soaking the fleece in room-temperature water for a couple of days and doing repeated rinses.  Even better (IMHO), use a wash method with lukewarm temperatures and a bit of soap to get rid of the other impurities.  If the water is not warm enough to melt the lanolin, it won’t be removed.  If you want to get rid of some of the lanolin but not all of it, raise the temperature enough to melt the lanolin, but reduce the amount of degreaser and don’t let the fleece soak in the warmer temperature for too long.  In other words, shorten the wash cycle.

You may have to experiment to find a wash method that works best for you, but there is absolutely no reason why spinning in the grease should be the same as spinning in the dirt.  There is, in other words, no good reason why you should not be able to spin a clean, lanolin-rich yarn.

/end rant

With all that in mind, I washed Thomas’s fleece so that I could retain some of the lanolin in order to work with longdraw spinning.  And you know, I’ve decided I prefer spinning fiber where most of the lanolin has been removed.

First, what I had was a partial fleece, and I knew I wanted to comb it.  The Valkyrie combs did a beautiful job of it:

Forgive the dark pic, but there are 600 grams (21.+ ounces) of combed bird’s nests. But in locks where I had left more than less lanolin, the remaining bits of VM or sand clung for life. It is absolutely critical that the wool and the combs are warm; you cannot comb lanolin-laden wool when it is cold. The lanolin behaves like cement and you’ll just end up ripping your fibers. So, tuck the fleece in a warm space and let it warm to the point where the lanolin become more fluid (around 95-100F) and then you can work with it. In my case, that was in a plastic bag inside a window where the sun happened to be shining through. Some of the few days when we actually had sun, that is. However, I still felt that I had more waste as a result of the cling effect than I wanted—and I wanted to hold onto every single gram of this fleece.

The Valkyrie combs created bird’s nests which weighed about 8-10 grams at the finish, and I “cheated” a couple of times and loaded the last rounds onto the hackle . . .

then dizzed from there to get a larger nest.

I had wanted to start with combed top, but I didn’t want a fully worsted yarn. Rather, I wanted the best of both worlds, so I span with a backward draw, letting the twist into the fiber supply to create a semi-woolen yarn. It is softer and loftier than a worsted yarn, but a bit more sturdy than a true woolen yarn, and the multiple plies make for a rounder and more durable yarn as well.

However, I found I actually have better control over my backward draw when there is no lanolin in the fiber. It is, I think, a matter of experience and practice, and I know I’ll get better at it, but the lanolin “hides” the amount of twist the single has and it is easy for the single to feel harder than it is—and to thus underestimate how much twist you actually have. There is a balancing point in the process which I haven’t yet mastered, and it may simply be that I need to keep even less of the lanolin than I did this time.

The end result, however, is that the singles are a bit more variable than I would have liked—or than I’d intended—so the grist of the yarn varies from 9-13 wraps per inch. I did scour the yarn fairly thoroughly when it was finished, and fulled it slightly, so the sections which had more lanolin than others and the sections which were more loosely spun as a result of that lanolin plumped like Ballpark franks. That accounts for some of the irregularity, but I’m afraid the rest is purely the fault of the spinner (i.e., me).

There are roughly 1100 yards here.  I’d wanted a vest, but I don’t think I have quite enough, so it will rest a bit while I search out patterns.  I am, however, very pleased with this yarn. Bond is a lovely fiber. It is soft, resilient, has a good degree of elasticity, and is a versatile fleece .  It’s not as slippery as Merino, but can be as soft.  And yes:   there’s more on the horizon.  There are a number of Bond breeders in the US (including Kate Lowder in OK and Joanna Gleason in CO), and I’m really curious to see how the US Bonds compare to the Australian Bonds (their home of origin), and that’s a question I’ll be able to resolve in a few months.  In the meantime, however, I am truly enjoying the journey.

By the way, Mr. Onery?

He’s proving to  not be very ornery at all.