Information AboutWool |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT WOOL | |
| animal hair products | |
| sheep wool | |
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Wool is the fiber derived from the Fur of animals of the Caprinae family, principally Sheep , but the hair of certain species of other Mammals such as Goat s, Llama s and Rabbit s may also be called wool. This article deals explicitly with the wool produced from Domestic Sheep . Wool has two qualities that distinguish it from hair or fur: it has scales which overlap like shingles on a roof and it is Crimped ; in some fleeces the wool fibres have more than 20 bends per inch. CHARACTERISTICS Wool's Scaling and Crimp make it easier to Spin and Felt the fleece. They help the individual fibers attach to each other so that they stay together. Because of the crimp, wool fabrics have a greater bulk than other textiles and retain air, which causes the product to retain heat. Insulation also works both ways; Bedouin s and Tuareg s use wool clothes to keep the heat out. The amount of crimp corresponds to the thickness of the wool fibers. A fine wool like Merino may have up to a hundred crimps per inch, while the coarser wools like Karakul may have as few as one to two crimps per inch. Hair, by contrast, has little if any scale and no crimp and little ability to bind into yarn. On sheep, the hair part of the fleece is called kemp. The relative amounts of kemp to wool vary from breed to breed, and make some fleeces more desirable for Spinning , Felting or Carding into Batts for quilts or other insulating products. Wool is generally a creamy white color, although some breeds of sheep produce natural colors such as black, brown, silver and random mixes. PROCESSING |
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