Fleece, Fleece Everywhere

As a side effect of being a spinner and a shepherd, I have a lot of fleeces. By a lot, I mean A LOT. I can not begin to describe the number and quality of fleeces I go through each year. Lets face it some of the fleeces I see are nothing but junk. I simply open the bag wrinkle my nose and ship them out. Maybe I am a little to particular, but after 11 years of spinning and fiber handling and putting my hands into literally thousands of fleeces, I think I have every right to be. It takes a special fleece to make me jump up and down.

This was once again brought to my attention today as we were cleaning the barn for the straw to come in. There is a method to the madness in my sorting system. The fleeces that are first up to wash or that are particularly nice go to the house. The next best fleeces ( the ones that I don't want washed RIGHT now or that I haven't skirted yet) go out to the camper. Yes you read that right I use a camping trailer to house fleeces. The last batch are the" these are in my way and I don't know what I want to do with them yet" group. Yes this is a group and it's the largest group by far. I once again encountered this group today while cleaning the barn. This group unfortunately seems to get moved around quite a bit and eventually finds their true home. This is usually when I'm in a hurry and don't have much time to think about it. Once again my procrastinators nature at work.

Wool Shows

Well May was a very busy month. Out of 4 weekends we had wool shows three of them. Well I guess technically two, but we always go to Maryland Sheep and Wool.

I have learned somethings by attending that many shows that quickly. First off some work and some don't. One show that I vended at was my first year and most likely my last year there. It was a very nice show, run by very nice people. The problem comes that I also have to realistically look at the bottom line. I didn't make money at it. Not even a little bit.

Secondly I tend to over clutter some of my space. I like to offer people a variety that is accessible. Basically I don't braid or bag all of our rovings because I want to be able to offer the occasional felter that 1 or 2 oz batch that they need. I think this tactic helps my business and perhaps at times hurts it. I have found the use of signs to be a necessity. People seem to be able to understand a properly worded sign and they like not having to ask.

Third, I do need to bag up smaller quantities for customers. At Great Lakes wool show I had some individual baggies of dyed locks done up and people seemed to love them. I had thought that leaving them loose and giving the customer the option to pick their colors would work, but a lot of them seem to be okay with the random baggies I throw together.

Overall we had fun and can't wait until the next one.

Sacrificial Love

I saw this term on a church board on the way to drop the kiddos off at Grandma's house this morning. The exact message was " Thank You Mothers everywhere for your sacrificial love". This seems like such an odd statement to me. I don't consider being a mother a sacrifice. Yes there are times I miss certain aspects of my life BC(before children). I think of those times and then of my kids. I think my kids bring so much more joy to my life and fill it more than any of those things I might temporarily miss.

After having children I do have a deep respect for other mothers and all that we go through. Seems odd to me that this joy would be considered a sacrifice.

As a late post a big Thank You to all the moms out there, and I hope each of you had a wonderful day yesterday.

Question: Do you consider being a mom a sacrifice?

I admittedly am not the most social person. In fact I'm probably one of the least social people you'll ever meet. I am the perpetual wall flower, the loner, the shy one. I have been this way my entire life. I remember as a child shying away from anything where I had to be in a group of people.

This social shyness in itself is not an odd thing. I have met many people who are shy and slightly introverted. I usually become friends with them easily. What makes this odd is that I am from a large family. I mean a LARGE family. I also scored high on leadership test in high school.

I think my problem is I always feel like the 3rd wheel. I never truly know how to behave in any "normal" social situation. If I'm around animal people or fiber artist, I generally tend to be okay. If you put my in a wedding, church gathering or some other appropriate societal function I become all clammed up and have no idea what to do. I would rather retreat into a corner and watch the happenings.

Breeding sheep for Fleece Quality

Many years ago my husband and I were talking and he asked me. "If you could raise just one breed of sheep, what would it be?"

What only be able to have one breed of sheep. What a drastically awful idea. I don't think I could bare it. Right now I am working with at least 3 different breeds and crosses of them. You see the problem here is that I am a spinner and I'm not really a spinner who goes looking for a certain type of sheep. I want a certain type of fleece. I love a good long staple with a good bit of crimp and lots of luster. I also want it to be soft.

We started with Lincolns and Border Leicesters. They were both very nice breeds with the beginning fleece qualities that I like. We had tried some Romney, but I didn't really like the fleece quality that came out. The fleeces just weren't talking to me. Those of you who are spinners and dealt with raw wool know what I am talking about. LOL.

The Lincolns and Border Leicesters were doing a good job. Then I read about the Bluefaced Leicester and their fleece qualities. This brought about intrigue. I liked this idea. A longwool that had the possibility to be worn next to the skin. We did get a Bluefaced Leicester ram and have used him the last 3 yrs. I am very impressed with the quality of wool that we are getting and hope to only improve from here. This year we are going to be using the Border Leicester ram again over most of the ewes. I am hoping to use the new Lincoln ram over the Lincoln ewes.

What dreams may come

I have almost always been an artsy type. It' started with my mom years ago. She started early to teach me to embroider and also to crochet. My dream job when I was younger revolved around horses and raising them. As a teenager I wanted to be a vet. I guess I just always knew I would be around animals.
Now as an adult I have let the artsy side of me come out. Not only do I crochet, but I've also learned to spin and knit. I do some needle felting and have on occasion used a triangle loom. I will leave color combinations to my husband though as he is much better at putting colors together.
I have found a world I am happy in and would like to enjoy more. We have been running the wool business out of a house for a few years now. In the last few months I have been having the dream of starting a shop as in an actual brick and mortar store front. I would love to do this full time.
My dream involves a co-op of sorts with locally produced goods. Items made and/or produced locally by artisans. This would include everything from raw wool, honey, handspun yarn, hand knit and/or crocheted items. I'm sure the list could be so much larger, but as you could probably guess my mind tends to concentrate on items that I am most interested in.
At this point it is just that a dream, but my hope is one day for this dream to come true.

Alliance Women's Fiber Fest

Well this was our first show of the season and it proved to be so in every way. I realized that the truck is more necessary in  this venture than I realized. We did get everything there and back, but it two loads there and luckily we got it all to fit in one load back.

My husband has a very artistic eye. This should really come as no surprise to. I have used his eye many times in my crochet and to put rovings together. I had him working on labels and price tags the night before the show.( I will admit I am the perpetual procrastinator. ) He did such an awesome job and even added some extras.

I need more little baskets( and big ones too). This seems to be a never ending problem. I am constantly putting things in baskets and never seem to have enough of them. I find the baskets useful. I put the roving into them loose so that people have a chance to touch and feel them.

The rack is wonderful and very useful. I was in love with the rack the minute I saw it and have fallen in love with it even more over this past weekend. I finally figured out how to get the legs off of it. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It was one of those things were you had to be smarter than the machine. I set it up and only found one fault with it which wasn't exactly a fault. A friend had some baskets attached to her racks and now I would like some to put on.

It was a rather slow show and we ended up selling more stuff  to other vendors than to visitors. Our big sellers came from leftovers of an auction buy. We had some books that had water damage and some cable needles that I just don't need right now. We were selling them at discount prices and if it wasn't for them I would've been really worried about the booth fee. I had 3 bigger sales of the day and luckily these made our day. When I did the final tally for the day I was extremely happy to see that we had actually made more than last year.

a picture of our booth.