While I seldom do it these days, I have to admit to enjoying spinning in the grease. Being a fairly uncoordinated person, it took me a long time to learn to spin on a wheel and my breakthrough finally came when some kind soul watching my struggles with combed top, handed me some grease wool and said, “Try this”.

There is one main point to consider if you wish to spin grease wool and that is this: raw wool contains both natural wool waxes (the lanolin) and suint, which is basically sheep sweat. It is the suint in the wool that attracts and holds the dirt. In fact, 20 to 40 percent of the weight of a grease fleece is suint and dirt and this will be spun right into your yarns. Suint is also what causes wool to feel sticky and it interferes with processing and drafting.

To remove the suint but leave the grease, give the fleece an overnight soaking in cold water and follow this by a half hour soak in tepid water. Do not add any soap, detergent or other washing agents to the soaks. Suint forms it’s own cleansing agent as the wool soaks in the cold water. The short soak in tepid water will remove residual components that tend to make the wool sticky. Then give the wool a good rinse and let it dry. Don’t stir or agitate the wool during the soaking and rinsing process. Once it’s dry, you have clean grease wool ready for spinning. Of course, you can skip this step but the suint will be harder to wash out of the spun yarn.

Processing and spinning grease fleece, even clean grease fleece, presents some problems. The wool must be warm for the fibers to easily slide past each other. Since wool fat starts to melt at about 110 degrees, a method must be found for warming the fleece without causing too much distress for the spinner. I’ve found two ways to do this. First, put the fleece in a black plastic bag and leave it outside on a warm, sunny day. The second is to place the bag of fleece on a heat register or next to a woodstove or fireplace. Either way, when the fleece feels damp, it’s ready to work with. The damp feel will be from the soft, melting wool fat. Only take a small portion out of the bag to work with at a time. The minute the wool starts to cool, the grease will start to harden again so speedy processing work is a necessity.

I do not recommend carding grease wool because the grease will build up on your cards and it’s very difficult to clean this off later. Combs are easier to clean and the tines can be heated prior to combing. The best method I’ve found for processing grease wool is simply to use a metal pet comb and comb each lock individually. This method also removes most of the vegetable matter (vm) that may be in the fleece though some will still need to be picked out by hand.

The wool fibers must also be warm for spinning or they will not draft easily. I‘ve found that it’s easiest to spin each individually combed lock right after it’s been combed. After spinning, check your orifice for any grease build up. If there is some, clean it with alcohol and a Q-tip.

Notice how wonderful your hands feel after spinning grease wool. But, one word of caution – before starting an “in the grease” spinning project, it’s a good idea to ask anyone you share living quarters with if they have any serious objections to "eau d'Ewe".