Week 9 - Activity continued! Twining fleece

 Thursday night rolled around and I was watching the viewings for this week.  In the video, Vested Interest, there were scenes of a sheep farm and bags of fleece were being inspected.  I had a desired to touch and work with fleece, especially since I had also seen felting in person at my worksite in an after school session on Wednesday.

So, I went and dug around in my storage locker for a bag of raw (though washed and carded - but undyed), unspun fleece. So random, right? Or at least that is what I can imagine my former 10-year old students saying if I told them about having a bag of fleece in my storage locker!

Well, not so random.  My parents live in Armstrong, BC. Their next door neighbour is a sheep-sheerer (originally from Australia). When he sheers some sheep or alpaca, if the owner of the animals doesn't have use for the fleece he sometimes calls my mom and asks if she wants some of it. The first time she took some, she and my sister tried washing it themselves in the bath tub but it was a dirty job (see the Vested Interest video). They found that there is a place in Calgary that will wash and card the fleece and even spin it if you wish. So that is what they do with any fleece they get now.  Sometimes a sheep-raising neighbour takes hers to Calgary and takes anything my mom has with her. (Looking for a niche market business? - maybe set up washing, carding, and spinning fleece in British Columbia!)

I had visions of doing some natural mason jar dyeing with my students and then felting rocks for paperweights - think of all the math!  So, I brought a bag (one of many my mom has) back to Vancouver. I even tried some of my own natural dyeing in the summer of 2020 when I was in Armstrong to experience what it was like, even though I used a vat and hot plate to do the dyeing, rather than mason jars like I envision doing with students. Here are the results on spun yarn using pink yarrow and white yarrow flowers and stalks:

I haven't decided what to make with these yarns just yet.

OK - so back to Wednesday night and interrupting my video watching to find fleece.

Once I had a handful of fleece, I came back to my work area and decided to try to play with twisting it/twining it as shown in the Art and Geometry of Ropemaking video.

I twisted it until it had a will to twist upon itself and then started twisting the two strands away from me while twisting them over each other towards me.  The first result was very fine. I tried again and didn't make the two strands as thin as the first time, hoping for a bit more obvious definition.

What I remembered from the video was about getting "zero twist" or finding the maximum twists per length so the twine doesn't unwind and is stable.  After a few twists, I got a 'feel' for how each had to snug up against the one before. Sure enough, the resulting "twine" did not unwind!

Remember I mentioned seeing the felting process in person at my worksite on Wednesday? The Literacy and Assessment Teacher brought in Janice Novakowski for a workshop on creating felted story maps for story workshop. She's coming back in April so the teachers can make felted figures to go with the story maps.

Check out Janice's tweet about the session!