Description
I love 23 micron organic merino. It’s so soft! This wool top is no exception.
Rosa is a colourway to make you dream of warm Spring days, sipping tea in your favourite garden. I hand dyed the wool in an understated blend of purple-pink, deep red and greens. It’s the perfect reminder of a soft rose with glistening stem, waving softly in the breeze.
This is the perfect felting wool – or spinning wool, whatever your crafting flavour is.
This beautiful jewel tone roving can be used for either spinning or felting (or wearing around your neck as a scarf, who am I to judge?).
Is this organic merino roving or wool top?
Let’s talk wool preparation and its differences. You’ll probably hear the words “roving” and “wool top” being used to refer to the same type of fibre processing, but they’re very different things. One makes a better felting wool, the other a better spinning wool.
Combed wool top (which this is) has all the shorter staples removed and all the fibre aligned in the same direction. Perfect for worsted spinning or wet felting.
Roving looks similar but the shorter staples of the fibre are still present and the wool looks a little fuzzier because it goes in all directions. This is the perfect fibre preparation for needle felting or woollen spinning.
Roving and wool top are both excellent, they’re just different! If you see me use the word “roving” in this listing is because the pesky internet algorithm gremlins demand it – it’s the most used (wrong) designation out there, for some reason. Apologies for that.
What wool is best for felting?
Since this is a question I get asked sometimes, I thought I’d leave it here. The answer, as it often is, can be tricky.
First, are you needle felting or wet felting?
When wet felting, you are adding soap, hot water and friction to your wool/fibre; this, in conjunction with the natural microscopic grabby “scales” that animal fibres come with, create felt. The higher the micron count, the thinner the wool, the quicker it will felt with this method.
If you are needle felting, you’ll be using specialised needles to push the fibres into each other to create the desired shape – the needle does most of the work and I can attest that even superwash wool (that’s wool treated to not felt with friction) can felt with this method.
When needle felting, a coarser wool might be more desirable to use on the core, and then add a top layer of finer wool for a smoother finish.
A disclaimer about colour
Although I’ve done my best to match the photos with real life, the pinks have come out too bright in the photos. In real life it’s deeper, more saturated instead of the in-your-face light depicted. Also, your monitor settings may differ from mine.