Fleece Overload

Yesterday was spent in glorious sunny Somerset with two like-minded friends solely with the idea of acquiring some sheep's fleeces and I think on the whole we were successful!

As I am relatively new to the world of spinning, dyeing and weaving this was my first ever first fleece sale. It could have been easy to have gone overboard and bought the lot. What I found really refreshing was the lack of hard sell and the willingness to discuss at length the life history of the particular animal whose fleece was on the table. These, of course were small producers, who made you feel that they cared for their flock.

My modest purchases were some gorgeous baby aplaca in a honey colour, a very small amount of baby black suri alpace which is so soft and scrummy I kept touching last night, some white Romney, a bag of Shetland from sheep called Venn (grey and morrit) a grey Clun, (which K said had a pink tinge!) and half a huge Blue-faced leicester fleece from Lucy aka Lightridge Jemima. This weighed in at an incredible 22kg - I feel for poor Lucy carrying that around. But as she is a prize winning sheep the fleece is clean and the most beautiful shades from deepest black to the most pretty silver grey (pics will follow). C and I bought this to share as it was really too much for one person to manage.




















And for the group to share we bought a beautiful Shropshire fleece for a fiver! On the way back we stopped off for post shopping cool down in Clevedon by the sea and sat discussing our purchases and other sheepy things over a welcome cuppa!

A perfect day!