Oh The Fiber – More interesting shetland wool facts

I found that shetland wool come in 3 types and this a fascinating to me as the only other animal fiber that I have found thus far that has this trait are pygora goats.

One type of fleece is what they call single-coated or Kindly. The wool is of uniform length and can be rooed or shorn.    Ok I had to stop right here as I have encountered a term I hadn’t heard before. What is rooed or rooing? Roo – to handpluck the wool off of a sheep (I’ll talk more about this later). Anyway back to the single-coated fleece. Short staple, typically 2 to 4 inches in length. Has a tendency to collect debris, but this can be easily removed through the use of the combing process during fiber preparation. Ideal for the softest, next-to-the-skin garments such as baby clothes.

Single coated shetland fleece from Windswept Farms

Rolled kindly fleece from Windswept Farms

The second type of shetland fleece is called Intermediate or classic, I’ve also seen it called longish and wavy. It has a 3-5inch staple has defined locks a nice crimp and an easily seen “tip” structure to the locks. This type of fleece is very open and spins worsted well.

Long and wavy fleece by Windswept Farms

Rolled Long and Wavy Fleeve by Windswept Farms

The last type of fleece is a double-coated, beaver or primative fleece. This type of fleece has a long staple over 5 inches sometime even 10 inches in length. The outercoat is hair-like while the undercoat is downy. There can be great variation in this fleece. The coats can be separated for different applications.

Double-coated shetland fleece by Windswept Farms

Rolled primative fleece by Windswept Farms

 I found out that some more about rooing or plucking a sheep. From the information I was able to glean from NASSA and Shetland Sheep Info. Some shetland sheep pretty much molt like my cashmere goats do every spring and plucking the fiber off by hand is rooing the sheep. Shetland Sheep Info has a great tutorial on Rooing. I also want to thank NASSA for their great site with tons of useful info. I also want to thank Mike Ludman President of NASSA and owner of Windswept Farms for use of his great pictures of fleeces. Check out their fleeces, rovings and yarns.

PS I was looking for a micron count of shetland fleece I found that usually shetland fleeces range from 20-30 microns.