Shearing on a cold day

This is a picture of Alfie, who was born last Tuesday. He looks a lot like his dad, who is a a gray pure bred border leister.

Yesterday we had Jeff come to shear 25 of our sheep, (two were already shorn). He arrived about an hour before we expected him having traveled from New Hampshire. He was very fast with the shearing, which is good when sheep are full and round with lambs.

Several of our fiber community came to help. We had 4 helpers in the barn. Two to catch the sheep, one to record who was done, condition, and help gather up each fleece into a sheet and carry it to the fiber building.

The first sheep shorn was Ruthie, which was washed right away, and this morning is dry already. She will be going with Sally and Sadie to be processed right away as we are low on white yarn at the moment.

In the fiber building we laid the fleeces out on skirting table to skirt away the edges and remove as much of the vegitation as possible, weigh the fleeces, and put each one into a bag marked with the name and weight of the fleece.

Anne, our fiber expert, was teaching inexperienced helpers about skirting the wool. This what I heard her say: "Think of the fleece as a jacket on the sheep with a zipper along the length of the belly from the neck to the hind end. The shearer unzips the jacket and peels the fleece off all in one piece. When you lay it out, you put the cut side down on the skirting table, which is a frame with turkey wire on it. You can identify the neck, which tends to be full of hay and vegitation, the rump, which may have britch, a coarser fiber and manure, and the legs. You then remove the edges with manure tags and most of the vegitation." When the fleece is fairly clean you roll the fleece inside out, folding the sides in first and rolling head to tail. Then the fleece is weighed and put in a paper bag to be washed and carded another day.

The shearer was done by 1pm, we had a pot luck lunch, and some kept skirting, some knitted or spun. We had a lot of fun, good food, and sold one raw fleece to a handspinner. Then Mary Ann announced that Sassy was having her lamb. She has a ewe lamb and we named her Abby. A big girl she weighed in at around 13 pounds. She is black with a tuft of white on the top of her head and the tip of her tail. Mother and baby are doing well.

This morning I estimated that we have over 150 pounds of wool in all. About 60 pounds of it is skirted and in bags. The rest is in sheets or laid out on a screen to dry. Thanks to all who helped with a very productive day.

Handspinning

This fiber I spun using the 20 year old used wheel we just bought, and was very pleased with the outcome. The skein of handspun yarn is pictured in the foreground, the washed fleece uncarded to the left rear. This morning I carded a bundle of it for comparison (right rear).

This is Hillary's fleece, which was one year's growth of lambs wool, her first shearing. Hillary is a ewe that lives with two sheep we sold to a couple who live in West Paris. They appreciate that Mary Ann is willing to shear their animals, and they have no use for the fiber so we brought it home.

When we did the shearing I was at once excited by the various colors in Hillary's fleece, and secondly by the length of the fleece. It was fairly dirty and full of vegetation, but with some picking and washing I ended up with about seven pounds of wonderful long fiber in various shades of gray, tan and some white. Wow!

This past weekend I had the encouragement of other more experienced spinners in a room full of spinners in Freeport at the town hall. Spinning did not come as easily to me as it did to Mary Ann, who took to spinning 7 or 8 years ago. I tried for a while, and gave up in frustration...happier to knit. Then I tried again....and again... I finally decided to spin one day when I found some roving I loved, and stuck with it until it was spun. Since then I have spun enough for a hat twice. I now can say I can spin but have not spent much time doing it.

Usually a spinner works from a batt or roving, which is fiber that has been carded (like brushing your hair) into long ropes called roving. Sometimes it is dyed before it is carded and one can create interesting color combinations with mixing colors. Sometimes it is carded by hand, sometimes with a hand crank carder, and sometimes with an electric carder.

I decided to spin this beautiful fiber without carding it at all to see what would happen. To spin I take a handful of fiber and draft it, which is pulling it into a loose ropelike piece of fiber. To begin you overlap the fiber with a string that is attached to the bobbin, a wooden spool that spins around when you press a treadle with your foot. The treadle is connected to a wheel that turns clockwise as you spin, and the spun fiber is pulled onto the bobbin and winds up like a spool of thread. Experienced spinners can decide whether they want a fine strand or a thick one. I just spin and what I get is what I get.

Mary Ann can ply much better than I can. Plying is taking two spools of handspun, holding them a certain way so that when you treadle the wheel counterclockwise the two strands are twisted together, creating two ply yarn. Mary Ann did the plying for me this time. I need to practice more to feel confident that I will have an evenly plyed yarn.

I had such fun spinning, and I am so pleased with the outcome that I want to practice spinning every day for a while...