Snail Spirals

A week or so ago, Liz sent me a bundle of wool to take a look at. This was a raw fleece that she bought locally and had processed at a mill, and while the wool was lovely, the preparation was not. It came back to her full of neps. Obviously this was extremely disappointing for Liz, and she emailed me to ask if I had any thoughts about what could be done.

I offered to do a test run through my combs, so she sent me a chunk of the roving. This is a Romney/Merino cross, and is very crimpy and fine. Liz told me the tag from the shepherd says "S/L 4"+/- Virtually NO vegetation in wool. Strong healthy fiber. Soft nice handle. Great color. Consistent in color & crimp. EASY TO SPIN." I would agree with that. The staple length was about 4", it's very soft, and a very interesting color. Sort of a cinnamony apricot gray. Did I mention crimpy? And soft? Definitely more toward the Merino end of the spectrum than the Romney.

And, unfortunately, chock full of neps. I pulled out lots of individual fibers, and they all seemed to be about 4" when held under slight tension, so I don't think the neps were due to a weak spot in the staple. The neps, when teased apart, were mostly long intact fibers. Some had a core of dirt or VM.

I spent a couple evenings this week doing experiments. There are a lot of pictures in this post, but bear with me, they're important for illustrating this experiment.



I'll start from the top left corner. The first piece is the roving in it's unaltered state.



You can see how neppy it is:



This is a terrible thing to happen to a beautiful fleece.

So my first instinct, and the first thing I tried, was combing. I figured that if anything was going to get the neps out, it would be the combs.



It worked moderately well. Unfortunately, there was a lot of waste. It took 5 passes through the combs (Indigo Hound double-row Viking combs) to get most of the neps out, and out of 5 grams of wool, I got 2 grams of top. (Note: my scale doesn't register amounts this small very well, so these weights likely aren't terribly accurate. Let's just say that I lost about half the fiber and call it close.)



It's definitely an improvement. The top is mostly nep-free and will make a better yarn.

I wanted to fully explore the possibilities with salvaging this roving, though, so I also tried using the hand cards (Schacht 208-point cotton cards). I knew that the cards wouldn't remove the neps, but I wanted to see what would happen. I did 6 passes through the cards, and rolled it lengthwise into a cigar, then attenuated it into "top".



Surprisingly, it was also moderately successful. I was really not expecting much from the cards, and was pleasantly surprised to see that some of the neps were "un-nepped." The very fine carding cloth and very gentle brushing seemed to untangle some of the spots and give a slightly smoother product.



There are still neps, but it's an improvement over the original roving.

The last thing I tried that evening was the drum carder. I knew it probably wouldn't be at all successful, but this is for Science, and is an Experiment, and I wanted to know what would happen. So I carded a little batt.



I sent the fiber three times through the carder (Strauch Finest), turning the drum very slowly and steadily so as to avoid having the fibers snap back on themselves as they transferred from the lickerin to the main drum.

This part of the experiment did not pleasantly surprise me at all. It was a completely expected Fail.



The batt is fluffier than the original roving, but that's the only good thing. The neps are still all there, and some were added. NO improvement.

So that was Day 1 of the experiment. My conclusions were that, as expected, combing was the best way to salvage the wool. However, I had a thought as I was working with this roving.

It seemed to me that the wool was not completely clean. It seemed slightly sticky and tacky, and the fibers liked to hold onto their neighbors, then let go with a boing as the crimp overcame the gluey stickiness. Fine wools are prone to this spring-back; that's generally what makes neps. This, however, seemed excessive and the stickiness wasn't helping.

I still had about half the roving left, so I decided to wash it and start over. I used hot tap water and a good squirt of Dawn dish soap, with two hot rinses.



As you can see, the water was very cloudy. You can hardly see the mesh bag through the water. Quite a bit of lanolin came out of this roving. After it was dry, I could feel the difference immediately. The fibers were more amenable to sliding past each other, now.



No real difference in the look of the roving, but a very different feel.



Still neppy. I started at the beginning, with combing.



Same as last time, I did five passes through the combs. I was hoping that the washed roving would give less waste than the unwashed, but it ended up being about the same, about a 50% loss. It was much easier to comb and diz, though.



Then, because I'm thrifty, I decided to see what I could do with the combing waste. There was just so much of it, you see. So I carded it on the hand cards, I think 5 or so passes, and it wasn't horrible. Neppy, yes, but spinnable.

I spun up quick and dirty samples on my little Cascade spindle, just to see what the yarns would look like.



The top one is from the combed top, the bottom is from the carded combing waste. Both were spun laceweight, as that's what I like to spin. The combed top was lovely to spin, and the neps were pretty easy to pick out as I went. It gave a somewhat textured yarn, though probably if I had spun this on my wheel instead of the spindle, it would have been more even. It's pretty, though.

The carded combing waste gave a very textured yarn, as expected. I had to restrain myself from picking out the neps as they passed, which was hard! I don' t think this yarn would wear very well, though maybe if it was spun thicker and had more plies it would be all right. Actually, now that I think about it, these neps would make an interesting textured tweedy yarn if blended with a contrasting colored fiber.

Next, I tried carding the washed fiber on the hand cards.



On the left is a rolag, and the coiled bit is a carderful that was rolled cigar-fashion and attenuated into "top." Both had six passes through the cards. As with the unwashed carding trial, there's definite improvement over the uncarded roving, and I think the washed is better than the unwashed.



I must say, I was really surprised that the hand cards got out some of the neps. I was not expecting that at all.

I also spun one of the rolags on the spindle, as a comparison with the other preparations:



It was an interesting, logical progression. The combed top is the most consistent yarn, followed by the carded rolag, followed by the carded combing waste. It makes sense, as the top has the fewest neps and the carded waste has the most. Spiffy.

The last thing I did was to drumcard the washed roving.



As before, not a good idea. Totally neppified.



I do think it's not quite as bad as the drumcarded unwashed fiber, though. It's a bit hard to compare the two, since the washed batt is thicker than the unwashed batt. I think perhaps it just maintained the same number of neps that were in the original roving, without adding more. Nice and fluffy, though.

My Conclusions:

1) I think this roving was inadequately washed and/or rinsed at the mill, which led to residual stickiness and the creation of many more neps than should have been formed during carding. The carding machine could also have been set to run too fast for this fine and crimpy wool.

2) Combing is the best solution to get out the neps and produce a smoother yarn.

3) Combing will result in a LOT of waste fiber.

4) It is possible to re-card the combing waste, for a textured yarn, preferably part of a blend for added stability.

5) Hand cards will smooth out the neps a bit, but you have to be very gentle. Very fine cards are probably best, and it takes quite a few passes for each little batch.

6) Drum carding the roving is not helpful, except to fluff it up.

What would I do with it? Two options:

1) Spin it as-is, neps and all, into fine singles, as even as possible but not obsessing about it, and make a 3-ply (or more) yarn. When plied, the bumpiness would tend to even out, as seen in this quick 3-ply spindled sample, a heavy laceweight:



It's textured, but not excessively, and I didn't even pick out any neps as I was spinning. Really not too bad as long as you don't expect a perfectly even yarn. The neps will tend to work their way out, though, and this yarn may be prone to pilling.

2) For a more hard-wearing yarn I would comb it to get as much good fiber out as possible, and spin a fairly thin worsted-technique singles, given the fineness of the fiber. I would definitely make a multi-ply yarn, to help prevent future pilling. I would then take the combing waste, dye it lots of bright colors and card it into a medium-dark wool for a fun tweedy blend.

This was a really interesting puzzle to work through. I enjoyed it!