Tips

Tips for great roving

One of the most important tasks is the one that many people do not like doing and that is skirting!  Skirting a fleece has changed so much in the last 20 years, almost every alpaca organization has given instructions, educational, and hands-on seminars on skirting and sorting a fleece.  If you have taken one of these newer courses, think back to what you learned as you begin to go through your fleece. If you haven't taken one of these classes, I highly recommend that you do.

A well-skirted fleece can produce wonderful results for yarn, and roving and the process can be time-consuming at first, but once you have mastered sorting through your fleece and are confident with your process, you can skirt a fleece in no time.  Roving is just as important as yarn is, roving is what handspinners use to make yarn and you always want to reflect your best quality while deciding what to do with each individual fleece. 

As we tend to our herd, I often access our animal's fleece while still on the animal, I look for the areas where the fibers break on the belly, look at the chest for guard hairs, and feel the neck fibers, looking for overall length. Doing this throughout the year helps me to decide what this fleece will be used for after shearing, so when I approach the blanket to skirt, I already have a plan of attack and makes my job much easier and faster to break down.

My motto is, if in doubt, take it out.  Remember that as you go through your fleece.

Always check for fleece soundness, take a lock and grab each end, place it near your ear and pull, if it easily breaks or you can hear a lot of tearing, it will probably not withstand mill equipment  have that discussion with your mill, they are there to help you or you can sell to a hand spinner or if you are a hand spinner, save to process yourself for hand spinning.

Often, coarse hair from the armpits and chest is not removed, also coarse hair from the belly is left in….look at your fleece subjectively, if it looks different from the majority of the fleece, remove it, if it looks like coarse eyebrow hair, remove and place it in a bag for core spun yarn.

Be careful about the different lengths of fiber in a fleece, fibers shorter than the median length can ruin your roving and yarn, they will stick out after spinning and cause your end product to itch, As a hand spinner, I dislike having to stop my spinning flow to pick out the short bits in the drafting zone that can litter a fleece and no one wants to make a lovely scarf or sweater and have it be itchy -  sort the fleece into lengths - pieces that are no more than an inch difference in length can be put together, and fiber less than 2 inches can be destined for the compost pile. Fiber that is 6 inches in length in one bag, and 4 inches in length in another - having a 2-inch difference in length can also make or break roving or yarn - a consistent drafting zone of the same length will produce a better hand-spun or mill-spun yarn and will also avoid the itchy outcome of shorter fibers sticking out.  

If you come across a questionable area, it may look almost the same as your nicest areas of fleece, but feels a bit different, it may have many medullated fibers sticking out of the tip of the locks so pluck out a lock and give it a wash in a bowl, let it dry and then compare, a years worth of ground in dirt can make it difficult to decide on, washing will help you make a better decision.

My thoughts on neck fibers - Neck fibers are often much shorter than the prime blanket, but in younger animals can be just as soft and fine,  I never include them in my blanket roving because of the length disparity - for my own animals, I will gather the neck fibers that are the same length and close in micron and blend together with a like micron wool fiber.  Anything that is shorter than the 2 inches is put in our compost -