{"id":5463,"date":"2020-10-24T08:27:23","date_gmt":"2020-10-24T06:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/waltin.se\/josefinwaltinspinner\/?p=5463"},"modified":"2020-10-24T08:27:25","modified_gmt":"2020-10-24T06:27:25","slug":"a-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/waltin.se\/josefinwaltinspinner\/a-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"A journey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week a nine year old picture of a bag of Swedish finewool popped up in my Facebook feed. The picture showed of my very first fleece on my very first spinning lesson. It was also the very first time I ever held a spindle in my hand. A lot has happened since then. In this post I walk you through some of the highlights from this journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A bag of wool from Pia-Lotta the Swedish finewool sheep.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My friend Anna is my husband’s colleague. At an office get-together Anna and I talked about knitting. She mentioned that an acquaintance of hers had sheep but didn’t know what to do with the wool. The acquaintance also said that a large amount of Swedish wool was wasted (I think the number at the time was around 80 per cent), or even burnt. This was shocking to me and I looked up an evening spinning class that Anna and I signed up for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A ram and his lamb<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile there was a Swedish finewool ram called Muffe. He fathered many lambs, one of which was called Pia-Lotta. For some reason kids were bullying Muffe. He got very stressed and had to be put to sleep for this reason. Muffe had been very loved by his Shepherdess Ulla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ulla had not planned to keep the lamb Pia-Lotta. But when Ulla saw Pia-Lotta on her way to the truck that was going to the butcher’s she saw so much of Muffe in Pia-Lotta that she couldn’t bare losing her too. Pia-Lotta got to stay on the farm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was at the farm where Pia-Lotta lived that the spinning course took place every other Tuesday evening and it was Pia-Lotta’s fleece that ended up in my bags on that first spinning lesson. After that I have got two more of her fleeces, one of which I shore myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Me shearing the finull sheep Pia-Lotta in the beginning of my spinning journey.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The journey of a fleece<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I got very fascinated by the journey the fleece made from newly shorn to a finished textile. Since the world of wool and this process was all new to me I was totally smitten by it. I wanted to tell the world what a beautiful thing spinning and the process from fluff to stuff was. So I did. I made a video that became a two year project. During that time I shot the whole process from the newly shorn sheep (Pia-Lotta) to a finished sweater where I showed all the steps \u2013 sorting, washing, teasing, carding\/combing, spinning, knitting and assembling. I called the video Slow fashion \u2013 from sheep to sweater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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