Great weather to wash some wool...

Today I heard from Sue Szary of Twin birch products.

She is a shetland "fleece fan" and has informed me that she 

always buys a fleece of mine while she is a vendor

at the Great Lakes Fiber show.

and yes,  Today was a great day to wash wool, I think this next 

week would be a great time to get wool wash with all this heat we are having.

Sue is in Siler city North Carolina and has a wonderful

brick and mortar store with handcrafted birchwood fiber 

art tools and much more.

Sue is also on Facebook at Twin Birch & Teasel.

Check out the link above to see the goodies that are available.

Wait! ...were did May go?

What happened?  I've had alot going on and really intended to get a post out in May 

and missed it.  We had the Great Lakes Fiber Show  -Which was awesome! 

I didn't get one picture!  I think I really need to take the whole week off

away from my day job to prepare better.

So lets catch up...

 We had a new white ewe lamb born this morning.

I've never lambed this late.  In January I decided to put a #61 Andrea

in with a white polled ram lamb.  I didn't breed her earlier in the fall 

because she had become ill and was already stressed.

But she has come through with the gorgeous lamb.

 The shetland lambs are growing by leaps and bounds.

The ones at the feeder are shetlands, two blacks a grey and moorit.

Those in the back are border cheviot / shetland crosses.

 My two spotted shetland lambs, on the left a ewe, the right a ram

are both loosing their spots :(

 Another gorgeous white shetland ewe lamb.

 The white lambs in this photo are all border cheviot / shetland crosses.

They are gaining quickly.  I haven't had time to weigh them

but I believe I will have a group of them ready to go soon.

Three more of the crosses.

 Back in March when we had the sheep sheared I held back about 

10 sheep that we would hopefully be able to roo.  

Well half of them did roo and we found that some didn't roo at all.

So while I've been working on shearing them by hand I have found

a why that is working quite well for me.  Which I will share.

This is one of my newest rams, which we really got him hoping to

get this pattern, but he doesn't roo.

 Isn't he pretty? and he has a good disposition.

 So what I have found is that if I part the fleece as shown above

then working from the back to the front I slide my hand shearers

into the wool as shown below.

 Holding the shears in the angle shown I can get close to the skin and 

not cut the skin. Continuing across to the front.  Taking small 

bites so you can see what you are doing and it really goes pretty fast.

 I can get the prime part of the fleece off in one piece.  I leave 

the britch and underbelly to take off afterwards.  Because these

are pieces that I would skirt off the fleece anyway...for a handspinner.

The britch still have a useful purpose, this just makes it easier for me.

TA DAH!!  A shorn ram in under 30 minutes!

That's all for today!