Tagged: Kainuun harmas
Wool
I have carded some of my Swedish Finewool sheep wool the last few weeks. It’s incredibly soft! I dyed it last summer, but haven’t had time to prepare it for spinning until now. The Swedish Finewool sheep is one of Sweden’s national breeds, developed from old Swedish fine woolled sheep with a little bit of help from Finnish landrace (aka Finnsheep aka Finn) rams and some Norwegian breeds at the beginning of the 20th century. It’s a rare breed nowadays, wish I shouldn’t have to use the word “rare” so often when I talk about sheep! I also carded what was left of a batch of Kainuu Grey wool. Yes, it’s a very rare sheep…
As always, I got tired of doing just one thing, so I still have all of the blue fleece to card. And I also got out of storing space! Carded wool can’t be pressed down into plastic bags just like that, it needs a lot of storing space. I hope you can see through the plastic bag how crimpy this wool is. It takes a lot of time and effort to tame it into spinnable rolags. I open it on the drum carder in 3-4 passes, and hand card into rolags. Spinning is pure joy! I spin the way I love the best: long draw on my Swedish Saxony.
I also finally finished two spindle shafts I made last year. I wasn’t satisfied with them, so I took my knife and sandpaper and made some improvements. They work fine now. The whorls are made by a Swedish ceramic artist and spinner, Lena Bergsman of Rostocks Keramik. You find her on Facebook.
We’re still waiting for spring. You may have heard of the Walpurgis Night, the celebration of spring here in Scandinavia and some other European countries. It’s supposed to be warm, sunny, green, and the spring flowers should be blooming. But not so this year! This is what we woke up to yesterday morning all over Scandinavia:
So we’re still waiting. Meanwhile, I give the birds some wool for their nests:
Wovember yarns
I’m still exploring six Nordic Short Tailed sheep breeds’ wool: Finn, Kainuu Grey and Åland sheep from Finland, and Finull, Gotland and Värmland sheep from Sweden. I have now spun a few samples of Finn, Finull and Värmland. I hope to continue next week with Gotland and more Värmland.
Kainuu Grey, Värmland, Finn, Finull, Finn on the bobbin, dyed Finull rolags
Finn and Finull are so similar that I’m not capable of distinguishing their fleeces or yarns from each other. That goes for all of the colors. Both breeds come in white (main color), brown and black. This is Finull. It could be Finn as well, but luckily I had tagged the photos:
Swedish Finull
If you haven’t already noticed: Kasper is always helping me. I love that dog.
Swedish Finull
The hand of the two wools is also the same. Soft, nice, much of it is next-to-skin wool, but there are also more robust fleeces. It’s wool that can be used for many purposes from soft baby clothes to blankets, upholstery and even rugs. It’s often short here in Scandinavia as the sheep are sheared twice a year. 5-7 cm is an average.
Värmland is another type of wool. I will return to it later, so let’s only mention it’s a primitive type of wool. Double coat, everything from very soft to harsh. All colors from white to black. A very interesting wool, as primitive wools often are. This is an older photo of Värmland I spun a couple of years ago. The triangular lock structure tells you there’s both long guard hair and soft undercoat. The guard hair can be picked or combed out if you want two different kinds of yarn from the same fleece.
Lock, 2-ply guard hair and undercoat, singles guard hair, 2-ply undercoat
I have written about Kainuu Grey here.
Half of Wovember is gone. I have loved reading the Wovember blog (link in the Blogroll).
Maybe I should honor Tom of Holland by mending something, and also showing some of my mended socks in another post. Yes, I think I will.
Kainuun harmas, Kainuu Grey
Kainuu Grey. Photo used with permission from Aholan Lammastila
Kainuu Grey, Kainuun harmas in Finnish, is one of the very sparse Finnish sheep breeds. It was considered to be a variety of Finnsheep until quite recently, but is now a recognized breed. It’s originally a dual purpose sheep that produced pelt for clothing, and meat. Nowadays it’s mostly a wool and meat sheep, as furs are not used to the same extension as before. The lambs are born black, and turn into various shades of grey when they grow older. The legs are black. I think the breed will develop into a more defined wool producer over time, as clothes made from sheep fur are seldom used any more. Some of the Kainuu Grey fleece’s I’ve spun have the tight curls that are wanted in fur sheep, whereas some are clearly more like the wools we want in spun yarns.
But as with most breeds nowadays, meat is the main product. How that will effect the breed is difficult for me to say. Many of the farmers that breed Kainuu Grey want to preserve the breed, which means bringing in big meat breads in the breeding program is not an option. A spinning friend in Wales said that moving a breed from lands with meager food to a region with better feedstuff will make the animals bigger and they produce bigger carcases, which of course sounds very plausible. The landscape in Kainuu is pretty well suited for livestock, but too far north for growing grains. In Scandinavia cattle was traditionally kept on better grounds, sheep could take what was left. Nowadays most of the sheep farms are farther south, and they are often on good lands. All sheep breeds in Finland have become bigger during the last 100 years. My guess is that over time Kainuu Grey with soft, Finnsheep-like wool will be used in breeding rather than the fur types. Right now the farmers mostly try to make the breed survive. There were not so many left when Kainuu Grey was saved at the last moment.
The first time I came in contact with Kainuu Grey it was in the form of a skin. I fell in love with the beauty of it: silvery grey at the sides with darker, tight curls at the back. It felt lovely, my hands loved it also! At that time I had no thoughts of spinning Kainuu Grey. Later, when I heard yarn was being made from the wool, I thought it wouldn’t be very nice, that it would be prickly. But something has happened, and I believe it’s a result of the furs not being used, and because all animals that are of any value for the breed have to be kept alive and in the breeding program so they are not slaughtered if not necessary. The Kainuu Grey I now come in contact with is often soft and nice, a joy to work with for a spinner who likes short wools.
Dark grey Kainuu Grey
I bought the fleeces from Aholan lammastila, one of the few that breed this sheep. It was good wool, no VM, but it was very dirty (it had been a rainy autumn). I had dark and light grey fleece, that I combed and rolled into faux rolags.
Wool combs: Valkyrie fine
Louet extra fine carders
Faux rolags
Now why on earth did I do that? The wool is short, and could easily have been carded into real rolags for soft woolen yarns. Because I almost destroyed the fleece when scouring! It felted, and carding was a pest. For several months I attempted thorough teasing by hand, flickring, beating, but nothing made me happy. So one day I took my Valkyrie combs designed for short, fine wool and made a test: it worked! I lost pretty much valuable fleece in the combing process, but on the other hand I saved some for really nice semi-woollen yarns.
The rolags drafted like a dream. Spinning woolen was was a joy, so I chose a long against twist / double draw. I’m quite happy with the result.
Kainuu Grey. 2- and 3-ply, light and dark grey
Light grey:
Barbro's Threads 