Glossary of Wool Terms
Batting: Fiber carded into a mat of interwoven fiber of consistent thickness and weight. Used in the stuffing of quilts, pillows, dolls, and mattresses. Also used by some hand spinners, and often used for making felted fabrics. Generally are in wide widths.
Clean Wool: Scoured wool available for market use.
Carded Fiber: Fiber that has been processed to prepare it for spinning. Carding removes debris and tangles from the wool locks. Carding is also a useful method for blending different fibers and colors. Carded fiber can be produced into many different products such as: batting, roving, and pencil roving.
Core Testing: The sampling of bales or bags of wool using a "core sampler", which collects a representative sample of the wool being tested. These samples are then tested to determing the yield, clean content, and fiber grade of the wool.
Fiber Quality: Fiber quality is also commonly referred to as grade of wool. The diameter of individual wool fibers determines the grade of wools. The diameter of wool is measured in microns, or millionth of a meter.
Grease Wool: Wool which has been shorn off the animal, but has not been washed (scoured) or processed. Also referred to as Raw Wool.
Handle or Hand: A term referring to the actual feel of wool.
Lamb's Wool: Wool taken from a lamb not over seven months old.
Luster: A wool characteristic determined by the amount of light reflected by the fiber.
Pencil Roving: Thin roving used by hand spinners to produce fine yarns.
Protein Fiber: Fiber derived from animals such as sheep, al paca, llama, goats, and rabbits.
Roving: A slightly twisted sliver or roll of wool produced during processing before it is spun into yarn.
Scouring: The process of washing dirt, grease and foreign matter from grease wool.
Scoured wool: Wool which has been washed in a process using warm water and detergents to remove grease, suint (salts of perspiration from sheep found in raw wool), dirt, and foreign matter from grease wool. Generally, the dirt, grease, suint, and other foreign matter comprises about 50% of the weight of grease wool.
Top: Clean wool which has been combed in preparation for worsted spinning.
Woolen Yarn: Yarn spun from wool fibers which have been carded but not combed.
Worsted Yarn: Yarn spun from wool fibers which have been combed.
Yield: Amount of clean wool derived from grease wool in the scouring process. |
