SHEARING, SKIRTING AND PICKING
Choose which fibers you want to use for your project, by viewing Purchasing Raw Fibers.
Then we need to learn how to remove animal fibers from the different animals.
Furthermore, Shearing, Skirting and Picking are the three preliminary steps to achieving a good fiber product.
The three steps needed to produce a good product are Shearing, Skirting and Picking
Shearing, Combing and Plucking are the different methods used to remove fiber from the animals
Most of us are familiar with the shearing of sheep as well as Alpacas, Llamas.
Some Angora rabbits in addition to Angora goats for their Mohair are also shorn.
Some breeds of Angora rabbits are only plucked when their fiber is naturally shedding.
Combing is the technique used to remove Musk Ox fiber or Qiviut.
Additionally, Camel’s fiber naturally sheds and you can pick it up or comb it out.
Click on the photos to watch how each is done.
The next step is skirting the fleece
The process of skirting animal fiber usually refers to sheep or Alpaca fleeces.
However all fibers need to have the undesirable materials removed.
The process is to remove all of the undesirable things in the fiber, such as manure, hay, wire, and other items.
This is just the preliminaries as the final preparation is in the picking of the fibers.
Click Here to see how to skirt a sheep’s fleece.
Picking, is the final step, in Shearing, Skirting and Picking
When picking fiber, the idea is to get out as much debris as we can so we won’t see it in the finished product.
We go through each lock and take out any grass, burrs, wire, matts, manure, second cuts and hay.
Furthermore, anything else we don’t want in our finished yarn.
Additionally, for some people it could even be a certain length of wool, so they would select only for what they want.
To see a video of how to pick a wool fleece click on the photo.
In conclusion, in order to get a really good usable fiber product we need to understand the processes required to get there.
Initially we need to remove the fiber from the animal and then remove the undesirable things to get a great fiber.
Happy processing!!