A Bag of Fleece

My daughter brought over a couple of bags of fleece from her sheep for my Mothers Day gift.  I was  in the garden and all garden planting came to a stand still.  There was wool to tend to : ).  I'm hooked on this spinning adventure and have been a bit down cuz I ran out of wool to spin.   I almost thought of spinning dog hair, cat hair, dryer lint, anything to get back to spinning.  And today I'm a happy camper, I got bags of WOOL!

My first with raw wool, so heres what I did. I watched YouTube,  got the jest of what I needed to do and hit the bags. 

I started with the female sheep's wool , it was a bit more whiter.   Had some debris but not to bad.

Then came the cleaning, hot water, Dawn soap, dirty wool and you get a nice wool soup, yuck!

 This wash took the lanolin out and made some really white wool.   I had the wool dry out on my racks from the mini greenhouse.  Worked real good and was able to card and spin same day : )

Here I used cards that I have had forever, dreaming of this day to happen.  The left over debris falls out doing this and in the spinning.

 

My first roll.  Soooo soft.   This wool is from a Dorset hair mix.  Had some curly's and about a 4 or 5 inch staple.

 A basket full and I'm ready to spin!

I'm still not getting a consistent thin ply but I'm getting better, and with another bag and a half to practice , yeah!
I love this Ashford Joy 2, its was so enjoyable to sit out on the porch, listen to the thunderstorm and hope rain would hold back until I got a bobbin filled.    It did and I did 108 yards of yarn.  Put it on the Niddy Notty and will dye it up tomorrow.

Garden update:

Tomatoes and more tomatoes,  was a planting day until the wool came.  I did get a lot of things in and hoping there was not going to be a hail storm.  It passed and all was good.  I do have buckets to cover the plants just incase. 

Need to get the Winter Sowing in coffee cans planted. Just did a few cans today with more to plant out.  Altho a lot od plants in the WS, there was many that did not come up b/c of old seed.


Mothers Day:
Going out to see my Mom tomorrow, she is doing wonderful after her broken leg a couple of months ago.  Check out my sisters garden, have coffee on their porch and hear about how my BIL got to see a Bald Eagle swoop down and catch a fish at the pond he was fishing at.   How exciting to see that!  He had no camera : (

Have a great weekend, thanks for stopping by.

A very Happy Mothers Day to all the moms.
linda