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Wednesday, July 16, 2014

A Tour Update

While I'm chomping at the bit to start on Miss Maisie's spinning, I'm not letting myself do that until I meet my Tour de Fleece goals.  Or at least most of them ;-).


This is Henrietta - some roving from several years ago.  She has a beautiful silky fleece for a Jacob and it always sells quickly.  When I noticed this ball had started to felt down into itself (it seems the silkier/looser crimped fleeces like hers and the longwools tend to do that if you're not careful...and sometime when you are :-o) I used that as an excuse to stick the last ball into my stash.


All it needed was a little fluffing up and some pre-drafting and it was back to spinning like butter :-).  Drafting is how you determine how thick or thin your yarn is going to be.  It basically means pulling the combed/carded (brushed) out thinner.  The fibers slip past each other and say the original roving is (just a random guess) 1000 hairs thick all side by side, you might thin it out until it's maybe 50 hairs thick.


It doesn't change the color.  There's just more air and light showing through.  It spins up looking like the darker gray.  Of course, it would have been helpful to have shown that, but it didn't cross my mind until just now.  I used to work for a man that always said "What a brain...", usually about one of his horses.  I find it usually fits me just as well.


11 comments:

Sandra said...

I love long wools!!
Beautiful color.
Happy spinning :)

Tyche's Minder said...

Longwool felts if left to sit too long? Sheeeessshhh. I really need to get a move on.

Tombstone Livestock said...

Can't wait to see what you do with Maisie's fleece. Decided today is a good day to do nothing and turn on the A/C .... the electric company will love me, ha, it's only money and I can't take it with me so might well be comfortable today.... Bot the I feel guilty I can't bring the critters in to enjoy the A/C.

Suzan said...

Henrietta does have such lovely color of grey!! Ha - if only my grey was that well blended!!

Susan said...

Lovely stuff. Nice job. What is it about grey that is so attractive?

Anonymous said...

Beautiful, beautiful. I have loved your posts and pictures showing the process that the wool goes through. All new stuff to me! So, sorry if this is a stupid question, but do you sell your sheep's yarn? I have never seen yarn straight from a farm before. I'm such a newbie! :)

thecrazysheeplady said...

I don't really sell much yarn, but I do sell raw fleeces and roving so you can spin it yourself. I'll even teach you to spin :-).

Anonymous said...

Oh, my goodness! I would definitely need lessons. :) I am totally in LOVE with Baaxter's chocolate brown wool. Will you sell some of his at some point? (Sorry to keep bothering you with questions! As I said, this is all new to me!)

thecrazysheeplady said...

Absolutely! I usually keep their lamb fleeces because that's the one I held on my lap. After that, I share :-).

Anonymous said...

So sweet...lamb fleeces! You are the best sheep mommy! Okay, so one last question (if I'm not driving you nuts by now!)...how will I know when you have wool to sell? Thank you so much for your time. :)

thecrazysheeplady said...

Well, that's a good question. If I'd just get to putting it up on the website... All of the raw fleeces have been sold. Everything that's left has been washed and processed into roving. I have decent amounts of "practice" roving available and a few "special/individual" sheep like Willard, Blossom, Boudreaux, Henri and a few others. Need to pop up into the loft and do a quick inventory. SO, pretty much you just email with what you think you'd be interested in and I'll see what I can find :-).

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