Like the grease in your hair, it’s there to lubricate and condition the hair (kemp) and undercoat, thereby keeping it soft, smooth, and damage-free.
Unlike us, the sheep does not strip off its natural moisturiser with harsh soaps and shampoos, and therefore does not suffer from frizz, fly-aways and split ends, therefore (again unlike us) they don’t need to re-grease their hair with oily conditioners, masks and serums and styling products, which often contain lanolin (or a near-identical chemical) as the moisturising agent.
However, some sheep do get the full salon treatment for shows:
Most people who claim to be allergic to wool have simply been wearing (or were forced to wear) wool that is not fit for purpose.
Wool comes in many qualities, from soft enough for baby skin (e.g., most merino, Blue-faced Leicester, Wensleydale) to fire- and chemical-resistant industrial carpeting. Historically, people wore underwear in the softer wools,
and outerwear in progressively rougher wool, up to Melton fulled twill for weather-resistant coats. Even then, there were differences: trousers or skirts for indoor wear were typically in softer wool, and usually worsted-spun*; outdoor clothing was more usually in sturdier, coarser wools, often blended with mohair, woollen-spun*, and ideally should be lined if you’re not wearing your merino long-johns or cotton petticoat underneath.
In addition, a lot of these ‘wool allergies’ come from a time when wool blends became A Thing because (1) the wool industry was going into decline and (2) more people had washing machines and wanted to wash their woollens in them. So your granny couldn’t afford the quality wool when she was knitting your school jumpers, and used a crappy wool blend with scratchy plastic in it, the washing machine battered the crap out of it, part-felted it á la Melton – and you blamed the wool.
So, the simplest solution for people who find wool scratchy – apart from buying better-quality woollen goods – is to wear something else next to the skin, such as a shirt under Granny’s Christmas sweater that she knitted specially for you with her crippled, arthritic hands, you ungrateful brat. Or you can try ‘superwash’ wool, which has the sticky-outy scales on each fibre chemically stripped off, which means it won’t felt, and isn’t (as) scratchy.
However some people are allergic to lanolin, the natural grease in wool. This is a pretty serious issue, as lanolin is the skin-softening ingredient in many lotions and moisturisers, and finds its way into soaps and makeup too.
To my knowledge, only sheep’s wool contains lanolin. That leaves a huge range of yarns available – note, I say ‘yarn’. Wool comes from sheep, yarn comes from everything else. You can choose from –
Animal
Angora:
English
French
German
Giant
Satin
Camellid:
Alpaca
Huacaya Alpaca
Suri Alpaca
Camel
Guanaco
Llama
Paco-vicuña cross
Vicuña
Cervid:
Cashgora (Cashmere-Angora cross)
Cashmere goat
Mohair
Nigora cross
PCA (Pygmy-Cashmere cross)
Pygora (Pygmy-Angora cross)
Silk:
Bombyx / Cultivated / Mulberry
Eri (Peace Silk)
Muga
Tussah
Other:
Arctic Fox
Bison
Cat
Chinchilla
Dog
Highland Cattle
Horse
Mink
Musk Ox / Qiviut
Possum
Reindeer
Wolf
Yak
Plant
Cellulose:
Bast Bamboo
Flax (linen)
Hemp
Nettle
Paper
Ramie
Cotton:
Acala / Upland
Egyptian
Naturally Colored Cotton
Pima
Manufactured:
Acrylic
Angelina
Carbonized Bamboo
Corn (Ingeo)
Chitin
Microfiber
Milk (Casein)
Nylon / Polyamide
Pearl
Polyester
Rayon / Viscose
Rayon from Bamboo
Rayon from Banana
Rose
Seaweed/SeaCell
Silver
Soy Silk
Stainless Steel
Sugar Cane
Tencel / Lyocell
Full disclosure: I haven’t tried all of these.
Of those I have tried, I would recommend the following as a substitute for wool:
Alpaca – any;
Cashmere;
Muskox/Qivuit for next to skin softness;
Angora – if and only if you aren’t afflicted with the scratchies. Angora is incredibly soft, but fuzzy and therefore tickly;
Bamboo bast or rayon – suitable for baby-soft skin;
Pima cotton – even though it dries the hands out as a knitting yarn;
Banana or soy silk – baby-soft;
Milk or milk and cotton blends;
Sugarcane;
High-quality acrylic, if you absolutely, positively must. It fills the seas with plastic micro-fibres, so think long and hard before you spend (serious, like cashmere-serious) money on this.
Of these, in terms of value for money, I’d go for alpaca, bamboo and cotton, in that order.
* – Worsted spinning sees the wool combed before spinning, so that all the individual fibres are parallel. It produces smooth, non-fuzzy yarn which weaves to a superior fine fabric. Woollen-spun yarns are simply carded without combing: the fibres are higgledy-piggledy and produces a fluffy, round yarn which is wonderfully warm – one example being Melton fabric, used for coats and blankets. While woollen-spun fibres are popular with handknitters, and worsted-spun with weavers, it is possible to use woollen-spun in weaving and worsted-spun in knitting.
Wool comes in hundreds of different qualities, some suitable for next to the skin, others better suited to outerwear. For thousands of years, people wore wool – either as fabric or fleece – from swaddling to shroud, with none of this crybabying about thquatching their thoft dewicate thkin. You got used to it, or you scratched.
Nowadays, people haven’t the skill or knowledge to select the right quality of wool for the purpose, and are too precious to give themselves time to get used to wool. They pronounce themselves ‘allergic’ (only a very tiny proportion are allergic to wool; ETA: Claire Jordan reminds me that more people are allergic to lanolin, the oil in sheep’s wool – that one is nasty), and never wear wool again.
Here’s an experiment. Grab a cotton wool ball or a face flannel, and scrub it, dry, over your skin. Or actually look when you’re towelling off after a bath. They all scrape your skin. In the case of the towel, you might well see what looks like dandruff flaking off your body as you dry. You’ll probably need to slap on a load of moisturiser, because the cotton strips the oils off your skin as well, adding to the flakiness.
The only reason cotton “feels” soft, is because the specific cotton fabric in your clothes has been chemically and mechanically treated to feel soft. Untreated cotton sandpapers the top layer of your skin off.
I’d keep crocheting, to be honest. Needlecrafts are to be recommended for pain management: many people with arthritis and other hand pain report considerable relief from pain due to knitting or crochet.
It might be worth investigating different hooks. Some people with arthritis find simply switching from metal hooks to wood or bamboo is enough. There are many ergonomic hooks on the market today which some people swear by. One example is Knit Picks Amour hooks, which have a contoured rubber handle, and are available in large (wool) and steel (lace) sizes. These are great if you normally hold the hook in a knife hold. If you’re a pencil-hold crocheter, you might be better with Addi’s basic grip hooks, which have a thicker pen-like handle that doesn’t need the tight grip of basic metal hooks. I’ve also heard good things about Furls hooks, but can’t comment myself.
Alternatively, you can purchase ergonomic handles for the hooks you already have. The Eleggant hook and handle set is recommended for hand therapy. There’s also the Boye Crochet Dude handle:
Some crocheters even craft their own ‘perfect’ handles using Fimo, Sculpey, resin, etc (a possible crafting substitute – and income stream!). I’ve also heard of people using pen grips!
If crochet is genuinely beyond you now, you might consider weaving – shuttles being substantially larger than hooks – needle-felting, or nuno felting:
Or a combination of all three. A fibre artist friend of mine produces some true works of art this way, incorporating fleece, wool, silk, bark and found objects into her tapestries.
This is one of these grand, aspirational sayings that makes fuck all sense when you get into it.
Half of all lion cubs die. At least a quarter are killed by incoming males taking over the pride. Lionesses sometimes kill other lionesses’ cubs. Others die of starvation, neglect, and predation. Occasionally, lionesses get killed by incoming males, or when venturing accidentally into another pride’s territory. A male lion gets kicked out of his pride on adulthood. Thereafter, he’s fair game for any male protecting a pride. The main cause of death of adult males is other males. If a lion survives long enough to take a pride from a weaker or older male, he faces a short, brutal life of fighting off potential successors – or worse, coalitions of young adult males. And if he does manage to reach some great age? Some fat fuck from Texas will have him drugged so he can shoot him for a trophy.
In between, it’s hunting and sleeping. Mostly sleeping. And a lot of starving.
Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of lambs – even in the wild – survive to adulthood. There’s much less of this murderous nonsense between rams. They live in friendly social groups, and don’t mind new members. Munching delicious grass and sometimes seaweed, hopping around on rocks and cliff faces, and even trees, making friends with the other animals,
and getting haircuts and mani-pedis from the hoomans.
Pluck off a quantity of the fuzz, and put it in bleach. If it’s wool-only, or blended with silk or oil-based synthetics, the fuzz will completely disappear. If there’s some trace fibre left, it’s blended with a plant-based fibre.
I find wool-cotton blends to be rather heavy compared to pure wool or other wool blends, and they feel cooler to the touch. YMMV.
Mohair is not wool, as such. Wool, strictly speaking, is a seasonally-growing undercoat from sheep, although the term is often used more widely to include fluffy undercoats from many other animals, including yak and buffalo.
Mohair is a hair fibre from the Angora goat. It has a silk-like sheen, dyes well, and does not felt. It is also very sturdy compared to similar-quality sheep’s wool, and for that reason is often used to make outerwear, and, historically, soldiers’ uniforms.
at the crown, with a few stitches which you increase, or
at the brim, gradually decreasing the stitches.
You may also knit the hat as a flat rectangle, sewing the sides together and sewing across the top edge. This produces a square-edged hat, which may be worn in either orientation:
It is also possible to work a hat from one side, using short-rows with increases and decreases to the other side: designer Woolly Wormhead has explored this construction, and almost every other possible construction too.
Another possibility is to knit a hat in segments. The best example of this is the Fool’s Gold jester cap, which is the basis for my Borg Queen, or I Are A Pwincess Now:
There are other, more complex constructions (grins evilly) too.
BUT EVERY SINGLE ONE CAN BE KNIT ON CIRCULAR NEEDLES.
I use circs almost exclusively in preference to straights (‘normal’ single-pointed needles). This is because I have relatively short forearms and large biceps, and most straights are too long and either get stuck against my upper arms or whack them with every stitch. I’m in knitting for the pleasure, not the pain.
Circs can be used for small tubular projects like hats or socks by
selecting a short cable
using two circs:
using a technique such as Magic Loop:
The latter two techniques can be used to work a hat from the crown down, starting with a few stitches, or when reducing the number of stitches for a brim-up hat.
For other constructions, a circ can be used just the same way that a pair of straights are used. Just knit a row, then swap the left and right needle-tips to the right and left hand respectively, and repeat.
PS: the foregoing works for socks, gloves, mitts, mittens, sweaters, scarves, trousers, toys, cushions, blankets, and everything that you can possibly imagine knitting.
Any animal with hair, fur, wool, etc., benefits from grooming – including humans1.
There are primarily two kinds of sheep, one hair (kemp) and one which produces a woolly undercoat in winter. Hair sheep have been domesticated primarily for milk and secondarily for meat. Wool sheep were domesticated for primarily for wool production, and secondarily milk and meat. There are still wild sheep of both hair and wool varieties. The wild wool sheep and some domesticated primitive wool sheep still shed their woolly undercoat in spring2,3, but the majority of domesticated wool sheep need to be sheared annually as the shedding genes have been bred out.
The majority of domesticated sheep are now kept for meat and milk, and have poor quality fleeces which are often unfit for any use – though some can be used as a natural home insulation. It costs the farmer to have such sheep sheared, and the farmer then has disposal costs. As a result there’s a trend towards breeding natural shedding back into some breeds, such as the Wiltshire Horn:
So yes, whether natural shedders like the Soay, or shearing sheep like Merino, sheep need to get rid of their winter undercoat, and we would use the cast-off or sheared fleece either way. Wool is strong, insulating, water-repellent, breathable, anti-microbial, hypoallergenic, non-flammable, renewable, and (if you buy locally) low carbon-footprint4,5, unlike synthetic substitutes. Its processing is non-polluting and very easy on the environment (sheep graze otherwise unusable land, and improve it), compared with many plant-based substitutes[6]. Accept no substitutes!
Some, not all, animals (including some birds) in cooler regions have a seasonal requirement for a warm undercoat. In warmer weather, that undercoat is usually shed or moulted: you will notice your pet cat or dog doing so in spring.
In domesticated (but not wild) sheep, the shedding function has been eliminated wholly or partially by selective breeding.
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