Bond Fleece

This is Willis' fleece. Willis is a Bond; these are pretty rare in the U.S. and I'm so glad to have 4 pounds of this delicious wool. 

Look at that crimp! The color is so pretty too. It is what I'd call beige but it does have a lavender undertone. It should take dye beautifully (off- white fibers often take dye better that pure white), if I can bring myself to dye it.

A couple of things that I learned in handling this wool: it is greasy as it is related to Merino and it is a lot stronger than it feels. I didn't use hot enough water during the first wash and had to rewash a whole lot of fiber. Also, when I started running it thru the drum carder, I was going very slowly and feeding little tiny bits of fiber with the carder set on its slowest speed. It was taking forever to get carded so, on a whim, I turned the carder up as fast as it would go and everything seemed to work better. The licker in was picking up more of (the few) second cuts and the batts had fewer neps/noils and etc. Who knew!

Here's a pic of one the batts held up to the light. They really did turn out nicely.

I'm spinning this on my Schacht- Reeves. Here's a bobbin shot of some yarn left over after plying. I'll post some pics of the finished yarn when it dries. 
Bond is delightful to work with; I'm really enjoying this fleece.

Corriedale:Part 2

I got Vork's (the ram lamb) fleece washed; his is the black/ dark gray from my previous post. I used Ecos this time instead of my usual Dawn. Some of the fleece still smells a little sheepy but that may be my fault as I seem to remember not having enough wool left for two full batches so I washed more than usual at one time.  Fiber sure needs lots of  water during washing. Otherwise, the Ecos worked pretty well. The wool feels very clean and the Ecos rinsed easily.

Next up, carding. I'm probably going to drum card most of this but hand cards would be a great choice too. Spinning from batts is fun but spinning for well prepared rolags..............ahhhhh. 

Corriedale!

I just got a bunch of delicious fleece. A few pounds each of black, gray and white Corriedale fleeces came in the mail this week all the way from the West Coast. These were the shepherd's "show fleeces" from last year; one's that she held out to have judged. Corriedale is such a wonderful fiber. It is usually soft and yields a nice bouncy yarn.

bags of raw fleece

A lock from the black fleece

 This time of year makes drying fleece a little difficult. I usually take my to the cellar and let it dry near our boiler. It will still take a few days............

It's Over

Fiber festival season that is. Here in New England, the first show is in early April and the last was this past weekend at the Big E in Springfield, MA. This is the 5th year for this particular show and it keeps getting better and better. We went on Sunday (me and my long suffering husband). There was a fleece sale that I resisted but I didn't resist a fleece. Here are a couple of pics of a Romney Cormo cross fleece from a sheep named Mercy that I bought from a familiar farm. 

The Cormo will make this fleece a little harder to wash because there is so much lanolin in it. The results will be well worth it. I bought a fleece from this farmer earlier this year and it is just wonderful. Now, I should have enough raw fleece to last through the long winter! (All told, that's over  14 pounds....)

Here are a few pictures from the festival:

What's spinning....

Jacob fleece is my current project. I just adore this fiber. Here is a picture of some of the yarn that I have spun; this is from the ram named Hector.

Here is some lilac colored lamb fleece before washing:

And the clean fleece, batts and yarn after washing. This lilac was a remnant from a bigger fleece that felted on the sheep. I only have a little bit (and that thanks to the kind shepherd). It is spinning into the most lovely silver color.

The white batts are more of Hector's fiber and here is some more yarn from his fleece: