How wool yarn is made

Wool comes off the sheep full of grease, sweat and dirt, and all of it is washed out before anything is spun.

stations: 5
things upstream: 2
raw sources: 2
step from the ground: 1

The short version

Wool yarn begins at the shearing shed, where the fleece is cut off whole and sorted by quality. It is scoured in warm water or detergent to strip out grease and dirt, then carded into soft bulky fibers or combed into smooth parallel ones. A spinning frame twists the fibers into yarn.

Shear the fleece

A shearer cuts the whole fleece from the sheep in one piece. A wool classer then groups wools of similar grade together to get the best return for each lot.

Goes in
Wool fleece
Sort by grade

The bulk of the fleece is separated from shorter, broken or dirtier pieces. Merino wool is graded separately, because it is finer than wool from meat breeds.
Scour out the grease

Raw wool, called greasy wool, carries lanolin, dead skin, sweat and plant matter. Scouring washes this out, with baths from simple warm water to detergent and alkali in industrial lines.

Goes in
Water
Card or comb

Carding teases short fibers into a soft, bulky mass for woolen yarn. Combing lines up long fibers and pulls out the short ones, which gives the smooth, strong worsted yarn.
Draw and twist

The wool is drawn out and twisted. Wool's natural crimp, a wave in every fiber, helps the strands cling to each other as the yarn is formed.

End of the lineWool yarn Next it goes into tennis ball, baseball, tailored suit and 5 more.

Worth repeating

In December 2004, a bale of wool averaging 11.8 microns, then the world's finest, sold in Melbourne for AU$3,000 per kilogram.
Before disinfection and workplace controls, raw wool could carry anthrax spores and give woolsorters a disease.