First off what is "true worsted"? According to PLY Magazine, an article written by Beth Smith states, a true worsted yarn is "...always hand-combed, with all of the fibers aligned and all of the butts (cut end that was attached to the sheep) and tips (the end that was facing the sun) of each individual fiber facing the same way." It goes on to say that spinning your yarn with the butt end first will make a smoother denser yarn, which means clean stitch definition and less pilling.
So how do we prepare a fleece for a "true worsted" yarn? Remember we have to keep all the fibers aligned in the same direction. This means we have to keep the locks in tact when we wash the fleece. Not every fleece you run across will be well suited for trued worsted yarn. It really does depend on how it's sheared and packaged in my opinion. I have here a beautiful natural colored corriedale fleece. It was carefully sheared and the locks are perfect for this type of yarn. I can basically just pull them in nice clean chunks. The tip of this fleece is closest to my thumb and the butt end is closest to my pinky finger.
The entire fleece was sorted and the locks were all laid out in the same direction in a big plastic tub. I just sat and listened to an audio book. Or you could watch a movie or listen to music. I think it took me about an hour to sort through a pound of fleece. You see all the locks are nice and defined. I had another small pile of fleece left over that was not in lock formation.
I buy these rolls of tulle from Hobby Lobby when they go on sale. They're awesome for making mesh pouches to wash my fleece with. I just unroll it and lay my locks on top then fold the tulle over and staple it closed. You could also stitch it closed with a quick running stitch going all the way around. You see below I've put them all in their pouches ready to be washed. I didn't stuff them too full. Wool needs a little space to get clean.
Now I wash the fleece just as described in my article Washing Joe's Fleece. The extra pile of fleece that I had left over from washing gets thrown in a small mesh bag and it's thrown in the same sink with all the rest of the wool, it's hard to see from the photos below.
Once it's nice and dry, I start combing. You see in the photo below, the bag of loose fleece left over from sorting. I actually combed that first and set it aside to be spun separately.
Now I'm combing the locks, I'm using a hackle comb set I bought from Moonsong Fiberworks on etsy, It's their extra fine set. I'm only using one side of the hackle that's the same width as the comb. You could use the whole hackle, yes, but I find that I'm much more thorough working with a small amount at a time. I use the entire hackle for other projects which I will show at a later time on another article.
What does combing do? It removes vm (no need for picking!). It gets rid of shorter staples, second cuts and neps/noils. It aligns the fibers in one clean direction. It's a beautiful thing! Now it's time to diz the fiber off the hackle. I loosely wrap mine around my hand into cute little fiber nests.
When I wrap my nests, I wrap them so that the cut end is what I will start spinning with. It's hard to see since the fleece is so dark. I ended up with 50 fiber nests in this drawer. It was so pretty!
I spun the yarn butt end to tip. I decided I wanted a sport weight yarn. This is for a sweater I plan on knitting with this. I'll talk soon about how to spin the exact yarn weight you want. That's a full article in itself. LOL.
* A note about combing- I find that when I comb from locks, I get much less waste as opposed to loose fibers....unless, you're really careful about how you load your loose fibers onto your combs. If you can keep the lock structure in tact...try to. It's worth the extra effort. Less waste and a beautiful "true worsted" yarn.
If there's any questions...please post them below in the comments! Thanks so much for stopping by!
