Fiber

Skirting the fleece is the ten minutes that decides all the rest. Fiber: Wool, Spinning, and Home Textiles follows one fleece from the skirting table to the finished cloth, and explains why everything after it - washing, carding, spinning - is either easier or impossible depending on what you threw away.

Readers learn how to judge a fleece by staple, micron, and crimp; skirt and scour wool without felting it; pick, card, and comb; spin on a drop spindle and on a wheel; draft woolen against worsted; ply and set twist; and colour the yarn with natural dyes, with a clear line drawn around which mordants belong in a home kitchen and which do not. It also covers what a fiber mill actually does, and what it costs.

Book 53 of the Homestead Starter Series. Each volume is a short, plain-spoken field guide to one subject, written to be read once and then kept on the shelf for the day you need it.

Hudson Briggs writes practical guides for people learning to do things themselves: gardening, livestock, food preservation, and the ordinary skills that keep a small place running.