How is wool produced?
I don’t know about companies in the UK, being Norwegian, but I should think that both Scotland and the Shetlands would have their share of wool processing companies. When wool was processed in the home, it would be washed after shearing – if you’ve never seen it, you wouldn’t believe how dirty it can be. Also, the wool is covered by lanoline, a fat produced in the sheeps’ skin, that makes it water repellent. If the washing is done in cool water and without soap, the lanoline will stay on. Sometimes this was done to make thick, waterproof – but smelly – garments. After washing, the wool is carded. This is done by using two utensils like big, square hair brushes. You catch up some wool with one of them, and brush it off slowly, so it comes to hang on the other brush, repeat until it looks like as a sausage of wool. When you’ve done that, the wool fibres are parallell, and can be spun. Spinning would be done with a distaff, or with a spinning wheel. Spinning is not easy to learn, and a wo
