Maryland Prep

I am so excited to be headed to Maryland Sheep and Wool in under 48 hours.  The thought definitely kicked my fiber prep into gear.  Last year, I bought a Jacob fleece.  I came home and washed it and then proceeded to flick it lock by lock.  Whoa, talk about painstakingly slow.  After several hours spread over several days I had a small perfectly white small amount done.  I drum carded that into a batt.

Note little basket of flicked locks and larger baskets of clean wool yet to be prepared for spinning.  This slow progress prompted me to rent my fiber guild's picker.

The very intimidating picker, you can not see the sharp nails that pick open the wool as you swing the cradle back and forth.

Picked and fluffed.



The dyed locks all fluffed.  See this post for this post for the dyeing info.

24 grams of the mixed locks picked and ready to drum card.

Feeding the locks into my drum carder.  These locks and bits varied from a quarter of an inch to one inch.  Lots of nepps and bumps.  I put it through the carder four times. 



I ended up with 88 grams of lumpy bumpy goodness

I was worried but actually love the color variation and the all the texture.  It is spinning into a cool yarn.  You can see the smooth white on this bobbin as well.  My plan is to spin and end up with a dark brown, white, royal blue and medium brown yarn.

My friend Shirley predicts this will be the one and only fleece I process myself.  It is super time consuming but this has been a good process, fun and absorbing.