BASIC WOOL TERMINOLOGY OR BALL DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN WOOL

Working with sheep's wool, especially hand-processing it, is a traditional craft that has been practiced around the world for millennia. Sometimes, however, one or two generations are enough to lose knowledge of the process, and with it an understanding of individual words or terms.

During the years of attending the craft markets, I heard many things about my spinning on a spinning wheel, for example:

"What a nice loom you have"

"Look, Auntie sews / knits / weaves!"

"What's this actually called?"

"I also knitted from wool, but it was synthetics"

We deal with obligatory questions about Sleeping Beauty and other fairy stories somewhere separately :-D

Basic glossary of woolen terms

We hope to clarify the terminology around wool processing. We will be happy to add a dictionary if you write us what we should not miss. Some terms do not align in the industrial vs. manual processing.

• WOOL = material, a natural fiber from the body of a sheep, from the stage when it grows on the sheep to the finished product. The yarn from other animals (these have fur or hair) is NOT WOOL and the ball of yarn from other fibers is NOT WOOL.
  
• FLEECE - entire sum of wool on the body of a sheep, or in the dictionary of the textile industry washed and machine-loosened wool.
  
• RAW FLEECE - sheared, unwashed wool, containing impurities and lanolin
  
• COMBED TOP - strand of smoothly combed washed wool (our offer HERE)
  
• YARN - spun fiber, which means fiber + twist, spun on spindle, spinning wheel or spinning machines (our offer HERE)
  
• SKEIN - yarn, wound in a circle and twisted into a compact shape. Before knitting, it must be rewound to a ball/cake.
  
• KNITWEAR - knitted product