Rambouilet Prep

 I've learned a lot from this fleece. It was a very basic off the sheep fleece. Well skirted, but not covered, and these gals had their fun in the sage, sand and alfalfa. But I persevered because I realized that this is really the way most of our ancestors dealt with the fleece..right off the sheep. The finished fiber is extremely soft, and in the end is worth all the work. I found that using hand cards was much better than using my primitive drum carder. 

The first 2 pictures shows you what I get off my carder.

 The fleece is short and has a tight crimp. Much like a merino in that way. I went back to using my hand cards to get these rolags which are much nicer to spin.

It was hard to get the rolags to come out without any neps at all. This was after a lot of picking.I like them a lot more than the drum carded batts.

I used the long draw for this wool, and I like how it turned out. There are some slubby parts, and those were usually caused by a nep or two in the rolag. The less fiber that I put in the rolag the thinner the singles turned out. I wanted a fairly bulky 2 ply to spin up and the slubbiness of the final yarn works the Monmouth caps up very nicely. Most of the Monmouth's I've been knitting I knit with the dark brown/black fleece. It is amazingly soft fiber. I've picked up some grey and morrit color and the next year "the girls" are getting blankets, so cleaning out VM should be less of an issue.

The final product...so soft!

This procedure has taught me patience. I started purchasing prepared roving and got a bit spoiled. I realised that if part of what I love about working with wool is the process of scouring and combing the wool right off the sheep, then going back to the basics is where I want to be, so I'm using the hand cards and working with the wool just as it is.

The reason I took these photos was to record the various steps so you could see what I was working with with this old style drum carder I have. I think that it would work a lot better with a wool of less crimp, like a Romney. I have put some Romney through it and it doesn't appear to nep up nearly as much. Not all of the neps in there are from "bits", it's mostly the teeth just not combing out the ends enough, and I do a lot of picking before putting it through the carder. Also I have tried putting the batts through the carder more than once. I'm not exactly sure it makes it any better the second or even third time around.