Turning Sheep’s Wool into Rugs – Construction of Hand-Knotted Rugs part 4 of 5
Welcome to the 4th part in our series on the construction of hand-knotted rugs! Today’s blog will focus on preparing the wool for dying and knotting.
Sheep Shearing, Wool Sorting and Washing
Shearing Wool
We won’t spend a lot of time talking about the first 3 steps since they are pretty much the same whether you are gathering wool for making rugs, or the thousands of other uses wool has in our society! Basically, the sheep gets a “haircut”, the wool is sorted based on quality, and then all the dirt (and stones and sticks) is washed out of the wool. Washing the wool is a pretty important step because you have to be careful to wash some of the natural oils (lanolin) out, but not too much. If you leave too much oil in the wool, the wool will repel the dye, but you can’t take too much oil out because you need enough lanolin to make the wool easy to handle and to produce a higher quality thread.
Carding the Wool
Carding Wool
Carding is the process of combing the wool to align the fibers. For the highest quality wool, this is done by hand between 2 combs. To keep labor expenses down, this process is often done by machine – but be aware that this produces an inferior product because a machine pulls the fibers more strongly, weakening the fibers.
Spinning the Wool into Yarn
Spinning Wool
Now here’s where the real skill comes into play! While the majority of wool is spun by machine (more on that below), we will focus on the process of hand spinning. There are two basic types of spindles; the top (or high) whorl spindle which originated in the Middle East, and the bottom (or low) whorl spindle which is used in Europe and the US.
Both types of spindles require a very experienced and skilled spinner to pull a few wool fibers and twist them into yarn – constantly batching in more fibers as the yarn is created.
Machine-Spun vs. Hand-Spun Yarn
The primary difference between machine-spun vs. hand-spun yarn is that machine-spun yarn is much more uniform in thickness. While on the surface this sounds good, in fact, the inherent variability of hand-spun wool creates a much more valuable product. There are several reasons for this:
- Hand-spinning produces a looser yarn that exposes more of the surface to the dye and creates a better knot.
- Because of the variability of hand-spun wool, when is dyed it absorbs more dye where it is looser and less dye where it is tighter. This creates more variegation in the colors, resulting in more depth of color and the prized “abrash” effect in the finished product.
- Hand-spinning is less abrasive to the wool than machine spinning and produces a more resilient and stronger yarn that lasts longer and wears better.
- Rugs created with hand-spun wool have a distinct pile direction which creates different colors depending on the light. This effect is not nearly as distinguishable in rugs made of machine-spun yarns.
We’d better stop there – that’s a short blog on a very long and laborious process!
See Foundation part 1 of 5
See Knots part 2 of 5
See Dyes part 3 of 5
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