Beth Abbott on Icelandic Fleece Study

Beth Abbott on Icelandic Fleece Study

Shaelagh Cull

Beth Abbott

Malting Tower at Tett Centre

In 1989, I got a sabbatical from teaching partly to do my in-depth study. So I did my in-depth study on the Icelandic fleece, and it was marked in 1990. But it happened that the first Icelandic sheep outside of Iceland, in North America, at least, were up the road for me about 15 minutes. And a friend connected me with the person that had them, had brought them in. She was an Icelander, at one of the Spinning Seminars, and that's another thing that I was involved in for many, many years. They hooked up a spinner with a producer for three or four unusual Ontario sheep breeds. And I was hooked with Stefania, who was the Icelander. So we got together and talked about it, and I spun some of the fleece and she talked about raising of the sheep. And I talked about the spinning, and we really formed a friendship. And so when it came time to choose my topic, I talked to Stefania and I said, would you work with me if I chose it. And this was going to really challenge me because the Icelandic fleece is a two-coated fleece. So it has a long outer coat, several inches sometimes, maybe up to 12 inches long. And then it has a short undercoat, which is very soft and fine. And when we learn about blending fibres in spinning, they always say you should have them more or less the same length. And the Icelanders have been blending the two coats of this fleece, which are probably at the farthest ends, fineness and strongness that you could get. And they've been blending those two together, one that may be two inches if you're lucky, and the other one that's maybe 12 inches. So it was just really going to be a challenge for me, because I knew that it was different from anything that I had done. And I figured I should be challenging myself. It's obviously a study. So she was cooperative, I spent a lot of time with her, and I got clips from her various years of shearing, and so on. And so I studied it with the idea of what did they do with it traditionally, and historically, because that sheep goes back well over 1000 years in Iceland. And then I thought, Well, now, okay, what would a Canadian spinner today do with that fleece? So I did all the traditional things, I separated it, I used it for embroidery, I used it for weaving, they actually use that sheep for everything from their underwear to their sails of their ships. So I tried all kinds of things that they would traditionally have tried. You can understand how different those two coats were. And the study became, it was historical, obviously. And it really took over and became something far more than we anticipated. And at one point, we did have the opportunity to go to Iceland, with the help of some family. And we had an extremely wonderful time and, and I learned all about the sheep in its environment. And we stayed on a couple of farms. And one of the farms was the farm that some of Stef’s sheep had come from. So that was kind of neat. And so the book was finished, the study was finished, and it was two binders full with all the samples and everything that had to be mounted in. And I had to do three copies of it. Well, in the end, I did five copies, because Steph said it would be wonderful to have a copy in Iceland. So there is a copy of the original study in the Home Handcraft School in Iceland, and I gave Stef a copy. And the college wanted three copies, one went to the Craft Council of Ontario and the college had two, that program is no longer running at the college, in Owen Sound. So we've had ours returned to us. But one copy is here in the library of the Guild. So then people the Icelanders, or the people that had Icelandic sheep would see this, that Stef had it, and they kept asking for a book. And so 10 years later, I rewrote it as an instructional book instead of as a study. So instead of saying I tried this, this and this, I just said do this, kind of thing. So it all had to be rewritten. And of course 10 years was, (a long time that) I wanted to know what was different in Iceland too. They had made some changes. We published it, my husband published it as a book. The Icelandic Fleece. A Fibre For All Reasons. My husband had been doing the magazine for the Ontario Hand Weavers and Spinners for quite a number of years. So he had some publishing experience. And so he laid it all out on the computer and, when we were in Iceland, we took something like 1200 slides and the geography there is just phenomenal. So I had to have pictures of all of that kind of thing as well. But anyway, we took a lot of pictures, and he took pictures of what I was doing and all my projects and that kind of thing. So instead of samples, we had photographs of the samples, but they were actual size photographs. So someone could actually lay their yarn on mine in the book and see if they were close to what I had used. So we published it, I think we had 750 copies, but we sold out of that issue, and we had another 500 printed and over the years, they've gradually sold. So we're down to I think about 25 or 30 books now. And there is a copy in the library here. And the original study is here too, because we have the studies of several of us that have done Master Spinners and Weavers Projects.