An Introduction to Handspun Wool and Natural Dyes

By Salli Rasberry
Published on January 1, 1972
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Use a niddy-noddy to make neat skeins of your newly spun yarn.
Use a niddy-noddy to make neat skeins of your newly spun yarn.
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A Navaho spindle or spindle whorl is used to learn spinning basics.
A Navaho spindle or spindle whorl is used to learn spinning basics.
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A drop spindle is an inexpensive way to learn to spin.
A drop spindle is an inexpensive way to learn to spin.
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Hand Cards are used to process wool for spinning.
Hand Cards are used to process wool for spinning.

One of the things I like best of all–and which I’d like to share–is spinning wool and coloring it with natural dyes.

Aquiring Wool

If you live in the country and can keep sheep, it’s really fine to raise your own wool. Ask neighbors–especially teenagers in 4-H clubs–which breed of sheep produces what kind of wool, what you’ll have to pay for the animals and how or where to get them started.

If you’re not into having your own sheep or if you live in the city, drive out back country roads through relatively open land until you locate the owners of small flocks … who will often sell wool at reasonable prices. Here in Sonoma County, California–where we live–sheep ranchers and other farmers who keep the animals always seem to have many bags full of wool in their barns … just waiting to be turned into yarn by some industrious soul.

Sheep are usually sheared when the weather starts to warm in the spring. Each good fleece weighs about 10-15 pounds (a big bagful) and the cost of raw wool can vary widely. Here, on the borderline between outer suburbia and the sheep and dairy country, I buy fleece from small farmers for up to 50¢ a pound. My neighbor, Kathy–on the other hand–has gone direct to the larger sheep ranchers and purchased wool for the cost of shearing ($2.00 per sheep), or only about 20¢ a pound.

As you examine your first raw fleece, you’ll discover that it consists of both long fibers and some short scrunchy stuff. The short scrunchy stuff is great for quilts but won’t spin up well, so separate it from the long spinnable fibers.

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