Fleece judging at Black Sheep Gathering

We are at The Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene Oregon this weekend.  The Shepherd has three fleeces out of 19, entered for judging in this class , lamb fleeces.  Judith McKenzie is the judge this year.  Judging starts in a few minutes! 

The 'Citing Noos -

Hooray for The Shepherd (and Galloway too!) They took Best of Class at the NW Washington Fair in Lynden this week.












Our friend (and the Mrreow's V.E.T.) AnneMarie, who was demoing spinning that afternoon took this nice picture of the proud papa.














And I can toot my own horn too - I got a blue ribbon on my blue yarn (the "center" one here) - Now, when I launch my Ewenique 4 You Designs at the Artisan Faire next month, I can add the by-line "Blue Ribbon Yarns" Hooray for me too!

Tomorrow we will go down to Monroe to pick up our processed fleece from our friend Gretchen. I am anxious to see what she has come up with for us.

Pure Bliss

The Shepherd had been cleaning house, making room for the tools and toys that he will need for his new gardening business and so he has taken a bunch of old fleeces to Gretchen's Wool Works - one of them being this beautiful moorit fleece. The exciting news is that Gretchen recently upgraded her mill so she can do TA-DA! ROVING!!! - And it is VERY nice too!

In fact, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it - I pulled about 10 yards off the bump and went to work.

This is how it spun up - wow, like a dream - and here is the rub - (big frowny face...) he had already planned that this fiber was for sale. We will have it at my spinner guild's SPIN-IN on the 13 of March. Oh well. There are two more Shetland fleeces he wants me to work on, and I had Gretchen process two fleeces that I had picked up - one Icelandic that I had her blend with some Alpaca of almost the exact same moorit color and another Alpaca fleece - I have to spin these up to sell the yarn (hopefully) - on our Washington Wool dot Net web site.

Here is some other Alpaca/Icelandic blend that I've been practicing on - what do you think? (it hasn't been washed yet so it has kind of an edge to it - hopefully it will soften up a little.)

The Shepherd at work

The Shepherd has been working on skirting fleeces to take to Gretchen's Wool Mill on Saturday. He has this Shetland fleece from a couple of years ago and has another from this year. We also have a couple of #1 alpaca fleeces (that is the neck wool I guess) to take down to be processed and/or blended with the Shetland.




He was very sweet and offered to skirt the Icelandic fleece that I got from our friend Nancy. It is the fleece from Lila, who we brought over to keep Violet company while she was getting used to our flock. Icelandic fleeces are definitely a "different animal" from the Shetlands - they are double coated - and we not sure if this one is "cotted" (kind of like matted, or felted right on the sheep) or if this is how an Icelandic fleece really is. I guess we'll find out when Gretchen looks at it.




As you can see, the long staples are a good 8 or 9 inches long, and the shorter stuff, well, it's shorter.... I'm not inclined to separate it, so hopefully Gretchen will be able to work a little bit of magic on this one. I'm keeping my finger's crossed.

One of the alpaca fleeces is almost a complete match for color on the undercoat - Anyone have any comments on blending alpaca with Icelandic?



Tonight I gave my new swift a work out - I had the final 100 yards of yarn for the sweater that our friend is going to knit for The Shepherd plus about 100 yards to sell to my co-worker and I balled up the Possum/Wool that Kathy sent me earlier this month. That Targhee top I got last weekend - spins like a dream on my new wheel - but I love spinning targhee anyhow. I'll take a picture when I get it all finished - it will be going towards a set of wrist warmers and hat for my church auction, plus I promised them I'd donate a couple of skeins of handspun yarn. Looks like I have my work cut out for me, huh?

Looking back Sunday -

Looking back only a year ago, March 29 found us in the middle of a huge snow storm, determined to get to Monroe, WA, where we went to Gretchen's Wool Mill to take some of our fleeces for processing.

Gretchen showed us all around her lovely little farm, where she and her husband raise East Fresian Dairy Sheep. They are large, friendly sheep that often have triplets or even more.







Undeterred by the snow, The Shepherd had the back of the truck filled with carefully skirted fleeces.






Here is a picture of Gretchen's magic mill - the bats that she produces are very nice and easy to process for spinning.

And by the time we got back home, the snow was almost gone. We will have more fleeces for Gretchen to wash and card up from this year's shearing. Two are already sold - one for my spinner guild's sheep to shawl next summer and one for the upcoming spring Youth Fair here in the county. One, maybe two he will skirt up and take to Eugene next June and see if we can beat last year's Blue Ribbon with a Best of Show.

A bounty

We met Gretchen from Gretchen's Wool Mill" the Saturday aftern Thanksgiving to pick up more of last year's fleeces that she had processed.












There were five of them - Moni is the brown one. Arlo and Gwen, straight Shetland and we had our September Shearing from Pearl and Luna that we had her mix with 20% alpaca.












That little bit of alpaca adds an incredible softness. It is like sticking your hand in a cloud!










I couldn't wait and had to spin up a little - I crocheted this little swatch.

I was reminded of the old saying - "an embarassment of riches".

Busy, busy, busy...

First it was the Olympics (loved the platform diving and the synchronized swimming!) then it was the Democratic National Convention (fell in love with Michelle Obama and was greatly inspired by the grace of Hillary Clinton) I am excited and proud to have our candidates transcend gender and race. It will be an interesting fall.

Got my church newsletter done tonight - to the printer tomorrow - and I'll finish my timecards for payroll in the morning before work. Whew -

But this is what I did for relaxation - I turned this (it's Regina) -








into this - (this is a real close up picture - I need to remember to put a coin in the picture like Leigh does.)

Not as good as my blue ribbon yarn - I didn't prep the fiber good enough on the first bobbin - Learned my lesson - hope it's one I'll remember because it makes life (and spinning) a whole lot easier!) Prep, prep, prep! (although there is something to be said by spinning from a bump of pin-drafted roving vs. spinning from a bat... even if it's been pulled into roving...hmm)

The Wool Show -

Quite frankly, in the number of times that I've been to Black Sheep, I've never really paid any mind to the wool show. I wasn't spinning then, we didn't have any fleeces entered, and it really didn't interest me much.

That all changed this year.







The judge this year was Lettie Kline from Kalamazoo, MI. Lettie has over 25 years experience raising Karakul sheep and has co-authored a book about making braided wool rugs called "The Shepherd's Rug" that is available on her web site. She also writes wonderful stories for the Black Sheep Newsletter. She pretty much knows her stuff when it comes to wool - and she is, admittedly, fond of Shetlands.


The Pavillion where the Wool Show was held is about twice the size of this picture - there were 31 divisions and about 15 fleeces (three of them ours) entered in the "Shetland Yearling and Younger" fleece division.









The judging had started on Friday morning. We had heard that the Shetland fleeces were to be judged Friday afternoon. We stopped in to check on it but the "fleece crew" decided to start again on Saturday morning, with the Shetland young fleeces being first. All the fleeces in our class were out on the front table waiting for the next a.m. event. You can bet that we checked them all out before we went to dinner.





Lettie was wearing a microphone and evaluates each fleece as she goes along, so you know what her thinking is. First off, she went through all the fleeces, looking and touching, moving some around. When she picked up Luna's fleece and took it to the "head" of the table, we (The Shepherd and myself and our friend Donna)
held our collective breaths.

Lettie explained that one thing she looks for in Shetland fleeces is denseness in the locks, and Luna's fleece is indeed dense. It is also very soft and passed the "rub" test when she rubbed the locks on the side of her arm and along her neck. The fleece has good staple length and is very "strong" when you pull on it.

Several times she went back & forth between first and second place fleeces - The Shepherd is chanting (in his mind, of course) "Pick mine, pick mine, pick mine" And she did!

Luna's fleece got The Blue Ribbon for Shetland "Yearling and Younger" fleeces. Moni's fleece was 7th and, for reasons we now understand, because of her descriptions of fleece qualities, Jewell's fleece was at the very bottom of the batch. It's not a bad fleece, it just didn't have the denseness that she was looking for.

Clicking on Lettie's name in the second paragraph will take you to her web site. I highly recommend her articles on fleeces and wool judging - you will learn a lot from them.




The Shepherd's Pride and Joy. Already slated for a couple of additional fairs - hope she does as well there.










Someone asked me if we won any money.

Nope, just braging rights.

And hopefully this will help to sell this handsome little dude - her half "brother" from this year. He's well on his way to having just as nice, if not nicer, fleece! Any takers?

Yes sir, yes sir, FIVE bags full!

Do you remember our road trip at the end of March to Gretchen's Wool Mill? We took seven fleeces - four from this year and three from last down for processing. True to her word, she called last week - in just a month, our fleeces were ready to pick up!





Luckily the weather was much better this time around - heavy rain in spots, but no rain at all once we got to Gretchen's place. Finished fleeces were inspected and duly loaded into the truck for the ride home.

Here they are - five bags full - (Anna Dee's & Regina's were combined)

All nicely wrapped in paper - this is Susie's from last year.

Click on the pictures to biggify so you can see the beautiful fibers!

I get to choose between Susie's fleece from last year and Gwennie's from this year - The Shepherd wants to have the other three made into sweater vests for himself. The one I don't choose will be our first offering for sale on the Washington Wool dot Net website!