Raw Wool: Getting, washing, preparing
Raw wool, fresh off the sheep! Still smelling like the barn, like lanolin, like poop. Sheep are not clean animals, and though you can put them in little coaties to protect the wool as it grows, that is an unusual practice typically only done for small hobby-spinning flocks. Once you've gotten some, you will probably first want to wash it, store it safe from the elements and - importantly - moths, and eventually figure out how to spin it.
You can get raw wool in many ways, from buying some online to walking up to your mum's shepherd neighbour in May or June. You can find our compiled list of webshops and other sources of wool on our Yellow Pages (link goes to wool sources, look around more on the page itself for other sources! Our favorite year-round raw wool shop is Purewol, they have so much variety).
Skirting
If you have a truly fresh-off-the-sheep fleece, chances are you'll be able to grab it out of the bag and throw it to spread it out, and it'll all still be in one piece. This type of fleece might not have had the pieces of sheep poop picked off yet - you want to do that first. On nice fleeces you'll be able to tear out the dirty chunks and be good to go. On fleeces of less fortunate quality you might want to go the other way and just pick out the pieces that you do want to spin. Keep in mind that there's a lot of sheep and wool in the world, and processing and spinning used to be a full time job of the entire household - it's okay if you just pick the best bits and discard everything else, there'll be more wool next year. Over time you can learn which bits of wool are the best or the most according to your preference.
You can also already pick out the biggest pieces of vegetable matter (VM). Don't worry about getting all of it - shaking out the wool might get rid of more, as will carding/brushing/combing the wool and spinning it.
Washing/Scouring
Wool is full of dirt, VM and lanoline (wool grease). Dirt and VM is pretty universally discarded, and the lanolin usually is too, though some people prefer spinning "in the grease". When washing wool, DO NOT stir vigorously. You can poke the wool down into the water a bit and squeeze it there to make sure the water penetrates, but much more than that will start it felting, and once it's felted, it's VERY DIFFICULT to continue processing it if you weren't already going to felt it. That's all the facts for this section - the rest is pretty up to opinion and preference, so feel free to try different things for yourself and look around for videos or articles by other people on how they do it.
To make your life easier and not have to play apple-bobbing with individual locks in the about-to-be-very-dirty water, you can put the wool in mesh laundry bags - Action sells them for example. In order to clean your wool of dirt, you can first cold soak it for a while. Lanolin is grease, so it can be removed from wool with warm-hot water and soap or washing soda (you could use dish soap, or for example, Kruidvat sells Zilversoda Grof for pretty cheap) and some time, after which your wool is going to want a rinse bath too. You can add vinegar to the post-soap rinse to neutralise the pH and make the wool softer. You can repeat wash baths until the water runs almost clear, and get the final bits out in the rinse.
After washing, you wanna take out your wool and dry it. You can use a salad spinner on clumps of locks to already take out a lot of water. Put them up like laundry - on a drying rack - or on a towel on the floor, in whichever capacity you can. People have also used Ikea shoe racks in the garden, if there's not a chance of rain.
Storing
The eternal enemy of people who are into woolcrafts is the clothes moth. Kruidvat (and bol.com) sells clothes moth traps and you can buy materials online such as cedarwood bits and bobs and lavender essential oil to put on cotton balls, which is supposed to repel them. Moths don't like airflow or light, so a good way to store your wool is somewhere it sees light and can get some airflow through it. Jute bags, see-through boxes, etc. You can inspect your supply regularly to make sure there's no eggs or larvae. You can look up tips online for getting rid of an infestation once you discover one.
Carding/brushing/combing
Now you have wool locks and/or clumps! Depending on wool type and preference, you can already spin those, but you can also first card or brush or comb them. Another optional intermediate step before carding/brushing/combing is to dry-pick the wool, which fluffs it up and already allows more debris to fall out of it, and lets you detect second cuts (short bits of fiber where the shearer went over the same patch more than once, usually not very usable for things like spinning anymore) and other things you want to pick out of your wool and discard.
Carding or brushing is done with a drum carder or hand cards, and is usually better for wools that are crimpy or otherwise not ridiculously long. Hand cards can be as easy to get as a pair of dog slicker brushes from the pet store, but we do list stores on our yellow pages that sell the real deal, as well as drum carders. The goal is to brush all the fibers into mostly one direction. After this you can pull it off the drum carder (in one piece this makes a batt, but you can also diz it to make roving) or brush/handcard (you could roll it up and make a rolag). These techniques involve a lot of intuition and feeling and are easier to explain in video format or in real life - find videos at the bottom of this page or on YouTube, or contact us directly about the spinning workshop and we'll see what we can do for you.
Combing is done with wool combs and is great for long wools. Site authors do not have experience with these (yet).
Discarded Wool
You likely now have a pile of good wool that you can use for spinning or felting or whatever else, and a pile of wool that came felted off the sheep, is too dirty, too short, too coarse, or whatever else. There's still various things you can do with this!
You can mulch it. Wool is protein and to protein it shall return.
You can use it as garden cover. Slugs have great difficulty traversing it, but can still slip underneath it. The wool cover will keep the ground underneath moister, and will decompose into fertiliser over time.
Further Watching
List of nice videos that showcase all or parts of this: