Know your fleece

In this course you will join me on my journey from fleece to yarn with the help of the Swedish sheep breeds Gotland sheep, Gute sheep, Klövsjö sheep, Helsinge sheep and Dalapäls sheep. I invite you to investigate a fleece of your choice through five assignments. This means a lot of work for you but at the same time lots of opportunities to learn more and get a deeper understanding of working with fleece in general and your fleece in particular. I invite you to explore, investigate and be curious about the fleece you have in front of you. There is no right or wrong in this. Your fleece is unique, just as your skill level and the wool preparation and spinning tools you have available.

The purpose of this course is for you to feel more confident in handling raw fleece and planning the process from fleece to textile. The goal is to produce a wool board to use as a guide for preparing and spinning your chosen fleece.

Modules and assignments

The course is organized in five themed modules with assignments where you work with your fleece and document your findings. After the course you will be able to use your wool board as a guide when you process the rest of the fleece. The work and time you invest in exploring the fleece now will bring you closer to the essence of your fleece and to making it shine.

Requirements

To take the course you need to feel comfortable in spinning yarn and you need basic knowledge in wool preparation. This is not a spinning course and not a course in wool preparation. It is a course in wool knowledge.

Material

You need:

• a washed fleece to work with during the course
• Tools for wool processing hand cards, combs, flick cards etc. You don’t need all of the tools and not from the start. Perhaps you can borrow some from a spinning friend or from a nearby guild or buy along the way.
• Knitting needles
• An area to work by where you have room for your fleece.
• Time! Invest time in this course to work with your fleece.

You will get videos with five Swedish sheep breeds, a tour of the Swedish fleece championships and five assignments, for a total of over 5 hours of video material. The videos are fully captioned in English. In addition to that you will get an ebook version of the course, downloadable checklists and links to further reading.