A wash a day keeps the fleeces in check..

Over the past two weeks I have tried to make sure that I wash two parcels of fleece every morning - and here are today's on the line drying in the sun. 

Today's fleece is part of the Border Leicester bought at the Masham Sheep Fair.  Yesterday's was some of the Cotswold and hopefully by Friday I shall have some Devon and Cornwall Longwool drying from this beauty.

This gorgeous sheep belongs to Lesley and Darren at  Brexworthy Farm and they have been kind enough to donate a sample for the SpinDyeWeavers display board.

Finally yesterday I finished combing the chocolate Bond, and as I haven't really enjoyed the combing of this one, and any excuse was enough to put it to one side.  The amount of waste from this has come out at a staggering 62% from my 550 grams share I have 207 grams of spinnable fibre!  But only 40 grams is the really fine..............

One excuse was some super black Corriedale given to me by littlemarchhare - it was described as having some hay!  Well perhaps a Corriedale X Hay would have been a closer description, as clearly the sheep had rolled in not only hay but brambles as well, but the fleece was well worth the effort.

I wasn't sure whether to separate the very soft lighter gray, but in the end I decided that it would look good spun as it is, and I am getting a lovely flecked yarn - singles here

and plying on Miss Bliss

Obviously all this washed fleece has to be combed or carded, and I try (very hard) to comb every afternoon, while watching Countdown.  Yes I know day time TV, but you do have to use your brain, plus at the end of the program I also have some spinning fibre - so good use of time I would suggest and a decreasing amount of fleece and a corresponding increasing store of fibre nests.............

I am hoping that having this sort of structure to my life will help during the dark winter months - for as Mr S so kindly pointed out the clocks go back this Sunday!  Which means dark days ahead.....

Great Expectations, unfulfilled..............

Imagine a chocolate coated Bond - no not the Martini drinking spy, but a sheep, whose fleece is chocolate in colour and has worn a coat to keep the fleece clean and free from debris.................

Bond is an Australian sheep created when Thomas Bond mated a Saxon-Peppin Merino ewes to stud Lincoln rams to improve the wool. I don't need to go into the background you can 'Google' Bond sheep and get all the same information as me!  Anyway we don't have Bond here in the UK, so of course it became a must have fleece!  I wanted to find out what all the hype was about, especially as I had never spun from a coated fleece, so last year I ordered a kilo of fawn Bond as part of a group purchase organised through the UK Fleece group on Ravelry.

It has been a long wait and along the way the SpinDyeWeavers had the opportunity to purchase a chocolate fleece.  Then it failed to arrive in the UK, then it was in Amsterdam and finally after 4 months at sea the fleeces arrived - I arranged to collect at Fibre East along with my Fawn - excitement was growing.

Last Saturday was the day - we spread out the fleece, its a phone photo so not the best, but take my word it was a big fleece 3.4kg and not cheap................

 

 

It was divided up between the six of us and it did involve a lot of crawling around and I believe that some derrieres were a trifle stiff on Sunday! 

In total fairness we all got two bags, the not so good stuff and the better - well Sunday I sat down to sort though my share and I really thought that there had been a mix up and I had got two bags of the 'not so good', but not the case - so all my great expectations were dashed....

I did expect some felting from the coat, but quite a lot is very felted, bent right over and bleached - which according to Judith McKenzie this could be because the coats weren’t change soon enough.

A goodly part of the fleece looked like this and when you pull a lock this what you get

You can see how dry and brittle the tips are and when you flick them they just break off! Remember this is from the better bag!

There are some locks which do live up to expectations, but not a lot (and these were on the top of the bag!!!)  However, in these locks  there is a lighter part running through the fleece! This lighter bit breaks as you pull the locks and would indicate that the sheep was stressed at this point (again as per Judith McK).

The shorter hairy fleece is quite coarse and not what I expected from a 25 micron fleece. There are a lot of second cuts, some VM and fleece encrusted with poo!

When in comes to preparing the fleece the felted ends make pulling the locks very hard which means there is a lot more waste than I normally get with a fleece - all this and more!

These are the two sample skeins that I have spun - the top is from the shorter locks and is quite coarse, the other from the longer ones, softer but there isn't much of this.............

At the moment I don't know whether I shall even bother with the 'not so good' fleece, if the better was so disappointing I am sure that the other lot will be even worse!

I have come to the conclusion that we are completely spoilt with Yvonne Hoskins's beautiful fleeces - yes they aren't coated so there is a bit of debris, but she skirts her fleeces so well that there is no poo and the quality is second to none!

At Fibre East I talked to Michael Churchmouse and he told me I would be disappointed with the Bond and he was so right - from now on I will stick to good ol' British fleece

The perfect drying/dyeing month.................

I can't believe that it is Woolly Wednesday again... Another month gone, albeit a gorgeous one weather wise!  The Tour de Fleece and France is over and most of Team Blissful Woolmakers made it to the finish line and prizes were awarded!  With the weather so very hot we felt that it would be unfair to Molly to spend days in a hot caravan, so we stayed home until Fibre East.  Last year Fibre East was practically washed away by monsoon rain and people moaned, this year it was sunny and very hot and again people moaned!!!!!  I was very good and spent very little, well I was a volunteer, so not a lot of shopping time!

July was certainly a productive month - all my fleeces are now washed and I have started a fleece book, grandly named Fleece Book Volume One, in which I have a lock of washed fleece and very soon a spun sample for each fleece.  I still have to wash some BoDo which is a Bowmont/Dorset X and rather lovely. Also I have finally got my one kilo of Fawn Bond, ordered nearly a year ago, but well worth waiting for.....

I am currently sorting the locks as there is a surprising amount of colour variation from the palest fawn to quite a deep fawn almost light tan/brown - very difficult to describe - but lush!  The crimp is amazing and impossible to capture on my camera.  There is also a chocolate bond currently sitting by the door waiting for Saturday's meeting of the SpinDyeWeavers when we will split our booty!

Perhaps not the dark chocolate I pictured more milk chocolate, but again a gorgeous fleece which is going to complement the fawn!  I see some colour work on the horizon...

But more than anything else July has been a silk month.  Inspired by some gorgeous spinning and colours by LindaCC on Ravelry.  I have spun camel and silk before and loved it, but looking through my spinning book I hadn't really just spun pure silk, it was always with something rather than standing alone. Remembering that many moons ago I had experimented dyeing silk with Procion Dyes I dug out the samples and these were the results!

 2plied

 

 N-plied

 

I wanted more so I dyed some silk, from my stash.  There are two types of silk available to the spinner - Wild or Tussah silk and Mulberry silk and here are the first samples that I dyed, from right to left, Tussah, Mulberry and Silk Hankies

The 50 grams of Tussah Silk (orange) then became Mr Tangerine Man, 456 yards with 48 wpi.

 2 plied

I loved the Mulberry silk sample so much that I dyed another batch - the skein looks like molten gold and I can see a shawl in this colour.

I found that Tussah silk takes the colour better - this I call Lavender's Blue as I took inspiration from the lavender plants in the garden

It is dry now and my fingers are itching to get spinning...................