Man's Best Friend!

John and Angel

Angel

Angel eagerly anticipating something, anything, just end the boredom!!!

Jacob Fleeces

I'm off to wash fleeces, Jacob to be exact. I was supposed to do this last year but it never stopped raining long enough to get it done and then life got hectic so... Looks like I will have a three day window to wash some wool and hopefully get some dye pots going as well.

Angel

Angel asleep next to my feet in my studio, so I started to take her picture and...

She figured out I was taking her photo, here she's getting up to bolt the room. She wouldn't come back NOT even for a cookie! You know my feelings really oughta be hurt but after five years I'm used to it now.

Jacob Wool

I managed to clean half of a fleece last night, here it is drying on my skirting table, it still has a lot of Vegetable Matter in it and now I'll work to remove this from the wool. I'm planning on dyeing this bit here with madder root and will probably spin it up for socks for John and I.

Wool Rant 2008

Dirty side of the Jacob fleece, filled with cockle burrs, grass, or hay, from improper feeding and pasture care. I intentionally left the picture files large so you could click on them and see the detail areas of the fleece.

The cut or clean side of the same fleece, see the potential!

Dingle berry, or turd, either way it should have been removed BEFORE the fleece was put into the bag.

Cockle burrs, gazillions of them, and this pasture was reportedly clean of burrs, a little bit of round up would be a blessing in this pasture! Or a teenager with a weed hook, whichever the farmer wishes to do, but burrs seriously decrease the value of ANY wool fleece. I'll spend hours picking the burrs out of this fleece to get it ready for market.

Hay was fed to the sheep in big round bales, well sheep like to rub against objects to scratch an itch and this is the end result, lots of vegetable matter (VM) in the fleece, again many hours of cleaning this to make it ready for market.

More hay embedded in the wool.

Black and white Jacob fleece that needs some TLC, it's full of burrs, needs to be skirted, and then washed before it can be put up for sale. Below: Lilac Jacob Fleece, the fleece is very soft, but a mess none the less. I can't wait to see the final product.

A picture speaks a thousand words right, then these are speaking mega bytes of words!!!

I think it should go without saying that if you are really wanting top dollar for the wool you are growing then you need to keep your pastures clean of burrs, and other vegetable matter.