Natural Wools
I think I might’ve mentioned a few times how much I love natural wool, animal fibres and embellishment fibres 🙂 I made a couple of natural felt pieces recently. This first one uses lots of different breeds of wool inlcuding Finnish wool, Gotland, Shetland, Merino, Chubut, Mongolian, Russian, French, Welsh, Irish wools and Portuguese Merino. Plus quite a variety of wool locks and embellishment fibres such as hemp, flax, ramie, bamboo, silk and cotton.
This is a close up:
And this is even closer, the boucle yarn is mohair Marilyn sent me and she also sent me the thick and thin yarn. The gorgeous reddish brown wool was from wollknoll, listed as ‘Russian Camel‘. I think it’s camel coloured Romanov, nowhere near soft enough to be actual camel, and probably 8 times cheaper, thinking about it! The little nepps are cotton nepps.
I love the way the black Bamboo top has rippled on the Chubut here, near the top of the photo:
And this is a closer pic of the Bluefaced Leicester curls at the top of the Chubut in the previous photo:
From one extreme to the other, this next piece uses just Gotland, or Gotland cross wool. It’s about 1 foot by 2 feet (30cm x 60cm). For the bottom layer I used commercial Gotland tops, the second layer was commercially scoured Gotland fleece which I carded, and the top layer is all raw Gotland locks, most of which I got from Zara not so long ago, with the odd few from my old stash. I’m not going to cheat and enter this in the 4th quarter monochrome challenge 🙂
You can never have enough different breeds of wool, I think, so when I saw some being offered in a UK spinners group on Facebook I just couldn’t resist. I told the seller, Wendy, that I loved locks and nice colours and let her choose what to send me, which is a good thing because I’d originally said I had enough alpaca. I didn’t have any like this though:
They were all gorgeous, and I made an album on Flickr if you want to drool, this was another particularly nice one, Mule sheep:
I’m going to take some of the locks to the Well-being centre tomorrow, but I’m sure I’ll be using them myself soon, too 🙂
16 thoughts on “Natural Wools”
Enjoyed seeing and hearing about your huge variety of wool fibers in neutral schemes. The textures are so dramatic! Now I’m heading over to Flickr to drool over your stash.
Thanks, Cathy 🙂
We’re spoilt for choice aren’t we, and when I was little I thought most sheep were white, with the odd black one!
I’d like to file a formal complaint, please! Before I started frequenting you lovely lot’s forum, I never would have notices all the beautiful ways fibre can be wet felted. Now I’m sort of fascinated and want to do it myself, too! Not fair 😀
Seriously now, Zed: those layers look amazing, well done. And the fibre?! That’s it, I’m hopping over to your place, demand biscuits and steal all your wool!
Thanks, Leonor 🙂
Just let me know what time and I’ll get the kettle on for tea 😉
You might need to hire a van, though!
Haha, I will! And I bet a van might not be enough 😉
The first one is so beautiful and the close up shows why with details such as the boucle and nepps. I liked the album too!
Thanks, Lyn 🙂
I’m going to enjoy trying all the new ones from that album!
Fabulous textures Zed! I love experimenting, too, with different wools and embellishments. I saw some alpaca fleeces recently at a nearby farm, but I haven’t had much luck with alpaca. But then I don’t really know the type of alpaca I’ve purchased from local farms. (Where on the animal, I’ve heard it makes a difference.) I’m glad you ot to use the thick and thin and boucle yarns. They are fun.
Thanks, Marilyn 🙂
Yeah, the age of the alpaca, where the fleece is from on the animal and which clip it is all make a difference. Oh, and the type of alpaca, I could only make lacey, holey, cobweby felt with the suri I bought. If you don’t have much luck making felt with yours, use the locks around the edges as decoration 🙂
I think I’ve used those yarns off you on every natural piece recently!
Love these! And your new wool looks gorgeous. I think it works perfectly for this quarters challenge.
Thanks, Ruth 🙂
What lovely pieces, such a huge variety!!
Thanks, Sharon 🙂
Great pieces, and so m any breeds we never hear off. I may have to beg some samples for our guild breed book.
Thanks, Ann 🙂
That sounds like a great idea, I’ll try to remember for you. Wendy who I got the new fleeces off wasn’t too sure about a couple of them as they’re cross breeds.
I will have a look in our book to see what we are missing. we have some very odd and rare breeds.