Babydoll Wool

Babydoll Southdown Wool

Babydoll wool is one of the finest wools of all the British breeds.  It is short (about 2 inches) and springy, soft and bouncy, with a surprisingly strong underlying disposition.  The micron count typically ranges from 23 to 29.  It is easy to spin and produces yarn with a lot of cushion and elasticity.  Since it has more barbs per inch than other wool types, it is also ideal to blend with angora or other slick fibers since it clings so well.  Its ability to felt is very low, although it can be needle-felted. Babydoll wool is great for socks, mittens, hats, blankets, and sweaters. You will find it has good durability.  

Most of these items are made with the wool from my Babydolls:  

You can click on each one to see more, or visit them all at My Little Sheep Etsy Shop

Recommended Care for Babydoll Wool:

To give you some idea of how Babydoll wool stands up to machine washing and drying, we did some experiments.  This is a scarf I knitted using bulky Babydoll 2-ply yarn.  It measured 70" long and was 5 1/2" wide.  These pictures are before it was washed:

Then the scarf was placed in a laundry bag and washed with other laundry using the Warm/Cold cycle.  It remained in the laundry bag to be dried in the dryer with heat.  It came out with a softer appearance and feel, yet remained elastic.  The stitches are still defined, just fluffier.  After washing, the scarf measured 64" long and was 6" wide.  So it actually shortened in length, but became slightly wider!  If my calculations are correct, it widened exactly the same percentage as it shortened.  So is that shrinkage, or simply redistribution?  If it were blocked or even laid out to dry, could it retain the exact proportions?  Needless to say, I find it fascinating!  Here are pictures of the same scarf after the washing machine/dryer abuse:

My daughter had knit a pale yellow and white skinny scarf with large needles to get a lacy effect.  Then she decided it was too long, so cut it and finished off both ends.  This provided us with another opportunity to experiment.  The scarf on the left in each picture was hand washed and hung to air dry.  The scarf on the right was washed in the washing machine (Warm/Cold cycle) and then heat dried with other laundry in the dryer (in a laundry bag for the whole process).  Now my daughter plans to machine wash and dry the other scarf since she loved the result:

As you can see, we're having a fun time learning how versatile Babydoll Southdown wool can be.  If you would like to spin, knit, crochet, or weave with it too, I have roving and yarn for sale on my Etsy shop.  Thanks for looking!

My Etsy Shop