Whitefaced Woodland fleece review

This post relates to the Yarnspinnerstales podcast episode 104 where I continue my review of British rare breed sheep fleece samples.  This is the Whitefaced Woodland breed.

There were two types of unprepped fiber in the sample, where some had more intact locks.  When I saw this I decided to only pick open half the sample and comb locks for the other half.  Then I got even more involved and split each of the halves, so I ended up with four types of prep before spinning.

For the worsted yarns I prepped by combing locks and also by combing with my handheld combs and pulling top.

The top is on the top of this photo, with the combed lock under the tag.

For the woolen I chose the obvious hand carded prep and then also did a cloud prep, where the fiber is just picked open as much as possible before spinning.

The cloud is on the left.

Here are close up photos of the yarns and details. You can see the yarns go from thin to thick with the preps.

Top yarn was a single of 21WPI 2 ply of 12 WPI. The 18 yard skein shows it to be a very smooth yarn, good for high definition stitches in knitting or sock yarn.  The combed lock yarn was 17 WPI single, 12 WPI 2 ply 17 yard skein.

Both woolen yarns spun very thick and thin due to the prep.  The cloud single was 16 WPI and the 2 ply was 9 WPI in the 17 yard skein. The carded batt yarn was the worse because the fiber used for it was the worse of the sample.  So it spun very lumpy. The single was 18 WPI and the 2 ply was 10 WPI in the 18 yard skein.