Lovely day for drying fleece

Fluffy all grown up

Fluffy as a baby

It's taken 5 washes of my first fleece sample before the water comes clean, so today Fluffy is hanging out on the airer in the back garden and I am about to was some more. This could take some time, but Fluffy is coming up a beautiful colour. I'm really getting excited about spinning now, just one more stage after the fluff dries, carding. 

More next time on the further adventures of Fluffy the fleece!

Brief pause in the proceedings

I had hoped to be able to post pictures of dry carded fleece made into Rolags by now, however I have needed to put the fleece through several more soaks than planned. This seems odd to me as the fleece was amazingly clean as you could see from the pictures in my previous blog post. All I can say is that Fluffy is good at hiding their dirt... 

The weather is currently amazing here, so it should not take long to dry and I can wash another batch. 

I also undertook a small test and spun a small piece of yarn to see what it spun up like. Very interesting...

The long staple makes it easy to spin, and the yarn has quite a halo on it - fluffiness coming off the yarn. This will make it quite a warm yarn, which is good, knowing the use that is intended for it. I decided to knit this small sample up too, to show what it would like as a finished item. 

Sample knit up.

Fluffy gets a wash

So this is day 1 of the 'Fluffy Project'. 

Yesterday I collected Fluffy's fleece from her owner. I had a lovely time finding out about the sheep, their story of being raised on a Lancashire farm, and what was planned for the fleece. As it was pouring with rain, I left Fluffy in the car overnight. 

Today is a lovely sunny summer's day, so I got Fluffy fleece out of the car and laid it out to inspect it. 

Now comes the hard bit, being patient and waiting for the water to cool. 

What a beautiful fleece this is. It's so soft and so clean. What an honour to work with it. Having laid it out fully, I have decided to prepare it in chunks rather than all at once. 

Next to assess the wool. I know it comes from a cross bred sheep. There's some mule, blue faced Leicester and who knows what else in the heritage. The staple ranges from 4 inches to 8 inches.

 Picture shows 8" staple.

There is some crimp in the staple, which I will look at under a microscope to ensure I know what twist would be best for the fibre.

Next comes the cleaning. Using my regular cleaning materials (hot water and washing up liquid with a drop of vinegar) I put a section of the fleece in to soak, taking care not to agitate it too much, I don't want it to felt. 

Next comes the hard bit, waiting for the water to cool before a series of rinsing cycles occur. Once clean, the fleece will be left to dry naturally before I card it into Rolags (cylindrical tubes of fibre containing lots of air). 

Once I have lots of Rolags I will be able to start spinning. The next instalment of this blog will pick up the story where I've left off.... 

The adventures of Fluffy the sheep

Once upon a time there lived a very special sheep. Fluffy was named this way because of how she looked, one big ball of fluff. When she had her annual haircut, the fleece weighed 4.5 kilos. That's one big fluffy sheep. One day, the lady who looked after Fluffy decided she wanted to use this 4.5 kilos to make something special... That's when I met Fluffy and her fluff. This evening I collected the fluff and brought it back to my studio to start the magic process of helping to make that something special...... All I can say is watch this space for the next instalment of the amazing adventures of Fluffy.  It's going to be a great adventure to see how this beautiful long haired wonder becomes a beautiful family heirloom. Pictures to follow...

Summer loving...

This year has been good to us as far as the weather is concerned. Last weekend I went to Woolfest, and helped out on the PHop (http://p-hop.co.uk) stall. I met two lovely ladies who ran the stall, and have decided that this is such an important charity, that I'm making it Knatters Knits charity for 2014-2015.

Phop offers knitting and crochet patterns in return for donations and suggest that you donate pennies per hour of pleasure knitting or crocheting gave you. What I love about this, is the fact that the doctors who work for MSF (Medicins sans frontieres) do so for a non-political, non-religious organisation and make such a huge difference.

I have made contact with Ros Clarke, the designer of the cricket tea cosy which she donated to phop who has agreed I can make these to sell in aid of phop too.  So look out for these amazing tea cosies when I'm out and about this year....

I'm busy busy busy right now, with commissions, demonstrating spinning and knitting. This is so exciting. I'm off to Great Eccleston show in the next couple of weeks, and the Fylde Artisan event, and rounding off the season with Yarndale in Yorkshire!

Who said winter was knitting weather, eh? Just goes to prove that all year round is knitting and spinning time!