Script for

Episode 154:

Meet the Longwools

Hey there Sheepspotters, welcome to episode 29 of the Sheepspot podcast. I'm Sasha from Sheepspot.com ,where we offer diverse hand-dyed wools to adventurous hand spinners. And we also give you the information and support you need to make those wools into beautiful yarns. 

I am so happy that you're with me today. Today we are talking about the long wools. So I have, and I don't remember what episode it is, is I've already done a spotlight on the fine wools. Today we're going to be talking about the long wools and eventually I will work my way through all of the major groups of sheep breeds and their wools. 

You can find a handout about the major groups of sheep breeds and wools in relation to episode two of the podcast where I just generally talk about the groups of sheep breeds and wools. 

So there's a handy dandy handout which will give you kind of a beginner take on the different wools and what they're useful for. Today, we're going to just focus on the long wools, which are amazing. 

So I'm going to cover breeds to look for, washing and prep suggestions for these wools and some tips and tricks about spinning these fibers and some advice about how to best use them. So let's dive in, shall we? 

Alright, what makes a wool a long wool? So long wools are characterized by long staple length. So from three to six inches in BFL, that stands for blue face Leicester, probably the most popular of the long wools, all the way up to 12 to 15 inches in the Teeswater. 

So long staple and a very distinctive crimp pattern. So think about if you can think about the crimp in a merino lock, which goes sort of back and forth at and those turns in the crimp as it goes from back to forth, those turns are kind of sharp angle in a long wool breed or in most of the long wool breeds and I'm going to talk about the exceptions. 

The lock actually has the structure of a curl, so either a kind of open wave pattern or in some breeds even a tight curl like a ringlet. BFL, for example, Blueface Leicesters have very tight curly cramp. 

In the Teeswater and the Wensleydale, those are kind of ringlet-like and breeds like the Border Leicester and the Lincoln have a more open kind of curl structure, but they are all characterized, except for a couple that I'm going to talk about that are very distinctive curved crimp pattern. Romneys would be the exception, and they have, and also Perendale, a little bit of an exception, in that they have a crimp structure that looks more similar to what you would find in a fine or a medium wool, where you've got those sharp angles as the crimp moves back and forth. 

But they also are characterized, they have lots of the English longwools, lots of the blood, the genetics of the other English longwools in them, and they do have good long length of staple. And typically these locks are kind of triangular, so they're long and narrow, and they come to a point at the end from a slightly wider. 

So think of a, I've just forgotten all my geometry terms, but think of it like a long narrow pointy triangle. That's what they look like. So the most celebrated of the longwools are all pretty closely related to each other, and they're all from England, from Great Britain. 

But there are some longwools from other parts of the world. So our best guess about where these sheep came from is that they were brought to the British Isles by the Romans. And of course, the Romans went in lots of different directions, so some of those genetics probably went to other places in Europe. 

So let's talk about the British group first. So there's a breed called the Leicester Longwool, sometimes called the English Leicester, and that is, or the improved Leicester, sometimes some people will call it that. 

And that is a more modern. version of a sheep that no longer exists called the Dishley Leicester and the Dishley Leicester was bred in the 18th century by someone named Robert Bakewell in England and he was really the first farmer to adopt what we now think of as modern scientific breeding practices and Bakewell was the name of his estate, I believe. 

Sorry, Bakewell was his name. Dishley was the name of his estate. So that's why they're called the Dishley Longwools. And so those sheep no longer exist but they sort of evolved into what's now called the Leicester longwool. 

And the Leicester Longwool is kind of the progenitor of the larger group of British Longwool breeds. The fine wools, the progenitor, is really the dominant genetics, and the fine wools come from merino. 

In long wools, the dominant genetics come from Leicester Longwool. In the down breeds, the dominant genetics come from south down. So all three of those groups have a kind of originary breed that then was crossed with other local sheep to develop into the other breeds in the group. 

So the breeds in the English longwool group are, in addition to Leicester longwool, the blue-faced Leicester, which we've talked about a lot and which you're likely familiar with because they grow the softest wool, the finest wool, in the English longwool category, and there are lots of them. 

They are doing very well because they're used in a specific kind of breeding, sheep breeding, and so they're often bred with use, blue-faced Leicester rams are often bred with use of other breeds to produce good market lambs. 

So there are just plenty of blue-faced Leicesters around, and they grow lovely, lovely wool. The other breeds that you may come across in this group are the Border Leicester, the Cotswolds, and the Cotswolds have these very distinctive kind of curly ringlet forelocks that are kind of hilarious to look at, and the gray-faced and white-faced Dartmoor. 

The gray-faced is listed as a minority breed by the Rare Breed Survival Trust. And most of these breeds are endangered to some extent. So with the exception of the blue-faced Leicester, the border Leicester is listed by the Rare Breed Survival Trust is at risk. 

The Cotswold is as well. And there are more of the Dartmores. And then there's a breed called the Devon and Cornwall longwool, also classified as at risk. The Lincoln longwool, and this is the breed that grows the strongest, coarsest wool of the group. 

They're listed as vulnerable by the Rare Breed Survival Trust. Then there's the Romney. And Romneys are a British breed, but they've been very successful in New Zealand and to a lesser extent in Australia. 

So, nope, they're not on anybody's. list of endangered breeds, but they are great, and they're a great place to start for your first fleece. And then there are the Teaswater and the Wensleydale, and they are the ones that grow these incredibly long, very lustrous ringlets. 

They're just crazy looking, but it's really divine wool. So the breeds, the longwool breeds that come from other parts of the world include the Gotland from Sweden and from New Zealand, the Coopworth and the Parendale, both of which are kind of favorites of mine. 

And they are both Romney crosses. So they're now their own distinct breeds, but they were developed. They're, you know, half Romney in their genetics, and they're also considered Longwools. They don't have as distinct a crimp structure as the British group, but they do have a nice length of staple. 

So which of these breeds are you most likely to find in commercially prepared fibers? So the most widely available is the BFL. Also available are the Coopworth, if you know where to look, the Gotland, Parendale, Romney, Teaswater and Wensleydale. 

All of those you can find in commercially prepared, almost always top for reasons we'll get into. More unusual are the Border Leicester, the Cotswold, the Grayface and Whiteface Dartmoor, Devon and Cornwall Longwell, Leicester Longwell and the Lincoln. 

So if you want to explore those breeds, you're probably going to find them in the link in the description. to need to actually buy a fleece. The good news is that there are lots of border luster breeders who grow, who raise border lusters with the hand spinning market in mind. 

And so you can get very pretty easily at fleece shows, you can get beautiful border luster fleeces, at least on the east coast, I'm just going to have a sip of water, hold on. The other breeds are a little, a little trickier to get your hands on. 

So if you're, but if you're looking for stuff that has been commercially prepared, BFL, there definitely are, there's at least one wholesaler. who with Gotland and a couple with Teeswater and Wensleydale as well. 

And I talk about the wholesalers just because that's how dyers get their hands on stuff. So if you're looking for hand dyed fibers, that is an important factor, what's available from the wholesalers. 

Okay, so let's say you get one of these fleeces, let's talk about how to wash it. So because of the lock structure, so think about a fine wool or a medium wool fleece. It's hard for dirt to actually make its way all the way down to all the way down the lock. 

So typically in a fine wool or a medium wool fleece, there will be, half of it will be dirty and then the part that has been closer to the sheep will remain clean. With longwools, it doesn't really work that way because the fleece is so open. 

So it is possible for dirt to work its way all the way down the lock. But the good news is that these fleeces wash really well because precisely they get more dirty because they're open and they also wash more easily because they're open. 

So a lot of the dirt will wash out easily and a lot of the VM will fall out during the washing process. And for reasons that we're gonna talk about, longwool fleeces are usually combed. So that means that you can really comb out any VM that is leftover after the washing processes happened. 

The other nice thing about these fleeces is that you can wash them in lingerie bags. You can actually bunch them pretty tightly in lingerie bags. And you don't have to worry a lot about them. kind of babysitting the lock structure. 

The lock tips are easy to find and pull out from the rest of the fleece so when you're combing it will be however you wash it even if you don't use lingerie bags you're going to be able to pull out the locks fairly easily. 

Now the staple length may differ within a single fleece so you may want to be have an eye out for that as you are kind of sorting through the fleece and getting it ready for washing and my advice would be to combine locks that are the same length and to do that at the washing stage because that's going to minimize your comb your combing waste so you're going to get the most waste while combing if you are working with parts of the fleece that are different length. 

You may also want to take out any sections of the fleece. And again, this is sort of the pre-wash sorting. You may want to take out any sections of the fleece that are really badly matted. That sometimes does happen with the longwools. 

But I would advise just doing a little test wash on any matted section. Just pull a little of it out and wash it and see if that helps. Because sometimes washing it will really help a lot and it will end up not actually being as matted as you might have feared. 

Longwool fleeces are quite heavy and dense. So be sure that you're working with small amounts at a time if lifting heavy weights is an issue. And let me just see if there's anything else I wanted to say about washing them. 

I think that that's about it. Okay, good. So if you have a fleece and you wash it, and it depends, typically long wool fleeces are not coated because the coating process is not great for long wool fleeces. 

So that's something to look at actually in your selection process. Don't find a long wool fleece and see that it's been coated and think, oh, that's the one I want. Be sure you actually look at it carefully because the fleeces can map under the coating more with long wool breeds than with some others. 

Okay, so as I've said, longwools are typically combed. And that's both because of longwools. Because combs are the best tools to deal with the length of these fleeces, and because combing these wools and spinning them worsted really shows off what's best about them. 

So these are dense, shiny, in most cases, drapey fibers. And so, you know, why not just make them into dense, drapey, shiny yarns? The staple length is going to make carding kind of iffy. You may find yourself with a huge snarl on your hands. 

You can cut the staples if you are absolutely determined to card, but I wouldn't really recommend it. And you might be able to flick shorter versions of these locks, but again, it may be hard to get all the way into the length of the lock and to get it completely opened up with a flicker. So combing, I would say, is pretty much the way to go with these fleeces. And these are the fleeces for which multi-pitch English combs were really designed. 

You can comb them with hand combs, though. You're just going to need to go maybe a little more slowly than you would with a shorter staple length. Be patient, especially if you're working with a really long staple. 

And basically go slow and be patient is my kind of, that's my advice for everything about these wools. It's found that it's useful to keep a spray bottle on hand with some liquid. And this is called combing milk. 

There are many different recipes for combing milk, and you're going to find the one that you like the best, and that's easiest for you. I tend to use just plain water with a few drops of lavender essential oil in it. 

When you are combing these locks and they're opening up, they have a tendency to kind of poof up in a big way. So you'll have this little kind of compressed bit of wool on your combs, and then you'll start working with it and it will suddenly be much larger than it was when you started. 

And if it's staticky as well, you can really make the combing process more difficult. So the combing milk both cuts down on the static and it also makes the combs kind of glide through the fiber more easily. 

If the plain water and lavender oil doesn't work for you, you could try mixing in a little bit of olive oil, which may go rancid if you leave it around for a long time, or mineral oil, which is less likely to go rancid, or you might add a bit of unicorn fiber rinse, which is a unicorn product. 

It's made by the same people who make unicorn power scour, and it's kind of a little conditioner for your fleece. So you can put a bit of that in some water and then just spritz it on the locks as you are working. 

Now I am going to do a little long wool combing and spinning demo on Instagram live to go with this episode, and that's going to be Wednesday, June 20th at 6 30. So I absolutely tune in for some tips, you'll need to follow me on Instagram to have that show up in your feed and it will be live at 6 30 and then it will be available for 24 hours after that. 

If you are listening to this episode from the future and you've missed the demo, I would recommend Beth Smith's very detailed discussion of working with the longwools in The Spinner's Guide to Fleece and that chapter will be a big help to your spinning as well. 

So in terms of spinning suggestions, my biggest suggestion when you're working with these wools is just slow down, be patient with yourself. You may find it at first until you get a little practice, you may find that you have some difficulty managing your fiber supply. 

I would advise you to just periodically stop and sort of rearrange things and get things back in order and then start to spin again. I would also advise that you start with a larger whorl because these wools are so long that they're going to require very little twist to hold together and if you put too much twist in you'll find that you have a very almost wiry singles and you don't want that. 

Most of these wools are stronger wools to begin with, they have a larger micron count. So you don't want to sort of add to that by also cranking up the twist and turning them into cord. So less twist, less twist, less twist slow down and move your hands further apart than usual because otherwise you will be pulling on both ends of the same fiber and that's gonna make drafting quite difficult. So let's talk project suggestions and here I'm gonna take it kind of breed by breed. 

So with most BFL that's available commercially these days, you can use that for anything that you would use a fine wool for. And for the softest BFL that you can find, the BFL that's really at the soft end of that breeds range, you could use it even for cows or for baby things. 

Obviously, you're gonna have to assess your own yarn, but really BFL is, very versatile. But you know the advantage of BFL is it's quite soft but it also has this nice long staple which means it's gonna wear really well, it's less apt to pill, and it has a beautiful luster to it and it takes dye in a in a very wonderful way. 

I really love BFL so as as I've said many times on this podcast. Now let's talk about Romney, Coopworth, and Parendale. These really could be used similarly to other medium wools like Corydale, Bond, Montedale, things like that. 

So you could make garments that you would layer over something else or if you're less kind of sensitive to wool maybe for hats or mittens, you're gonna see quite a bit of variation in Romney and also in Coopworth depending on where the wool comes from. 

So Romney breeders in North America tend to be going for a softer fleece. This is it's kind of the opposite or as I found it it's the opposite with Coopworth. So Romney breeders in North America are going for a softer fleece than say Romney breeders in New Zealand and in my experience Coopworth works the opposite way. 

So I sell some really lovely New Zealand Coopworth that I would say you could do anything with it that you could do with Corydale or and Parendale as well can be quite soft relatively speaking. 

So you know Lincoln which is the strongest, the coarsest of these wools, mat can go up to like 40 microns or higher. So that is going to be more appropriate for maybe a woven fabric that you're going to use as a household textile for rugs, for things like that. 

Now, Wensleydale and Teeswater, they're very closely related. So I believe that Wensleydale is, yeah, Teaswater comes first and then Wensleydale is a cross of Teaswater with some other sheep. But they have various, their fleeces seem very similar to me. 

And I would probably use them in the same way. So again, for garments that I'm going to layer over something else, or also they're quite wonderful spun to ply and knit into lace. So you heard it here first. 

Well, not really. Really, Beth Smith is the pioneer of that particular combination of the Longwools and lace, but I learned it from her and I do think it's a good idea. All right, I hope that that has been useful. 

I hope it has piqued your interest in the longwools. That is it for me this week. Next week, we are going to dive even deeper into the longwools with a breed spotlight on one of the non-English breeds in this category, the parendale. 

And if all this breed talk is making you curious and kind of excited to start your own breed study, may I recommend the Sheepspot Fiber Club as the most convenient way to get new to you breeds delivered right to your door along with detailed breed information. 

You can customize your membership in lots of ways. You can opt for dyed or undyed fiber. And if you choose dyed fiber, you get to choose among four different colorways for each shipment. You can choose to join for six months or the whole year. 

You can pay at once or in installments. And you can even choose to get 200 grams of fiber in every shipment instead of just 100 grams. Members also get access to sampling videos. I sample each fiber a bunch of different ways. 

We're going to have a Slack community, a private Slack community. And I will do a live question and answer session about each breed. This year, there are also gonna be some additional bonuses that I haven't divulged yet. 

So memberships in the club go on sale only once a year. And this year, they will be available. for a week starting on July 9th. If you'd like more information and a reminder when the club opens, please head over to sheepspot.com slash fiberclub and leave your email address. 

And again, if you are listening to this in the future, hello future listener, and the club is already closed for 2018, you can still go to sheepspot.com slash fiberclub and sign up and I will notify you when memberships next go on sale. 

So thank you so much for joining me. I hope that you have enjoyed this little peek, sneak peek at the long wools and that you are gonna give these fabulous breeds a try. I will talk to you next week about parendale. 

And until then, go spin something. All right, bye guys. See you then. Bye-bye.