Neil managed to read a whole book while I played in fibre with mum, but somehow we managed to have no time to get anything done - well that’s what it seemed like at the end of the week.
I showed you Latte’s scrummy fleece in the last post (oh, and I weighed the bag I brought back - it was 1kg :-D sadly, it’s being parceled out to a few friends, not all for me) and so I follow that up with a picture of the fleece from one of the sheep:
Here it is on the wool table in our ancient shearing shed, and below a closeup in the sunshine…
It’s a Border Leicester / Merino cross, staple length about 5″ and lovely and soft. Great crimp too - it’s very bouncy!
We spent much of the week playing around with our new Golding Ring Spindles (I bought one for mum for Christmas and got one for me as well to balance the parcel in the post) and digging through piles of mum’s fibres to find interesting stuff. Icame home with a bit of blended merino, some optim (it’s ick to spin but I’m determined to conquer it), australian cashmere, angora, and something else I forgot to label.
I also managed to talk mum into buying me my long-desired wool combs for Christmas and so we spent a fun afternoon playing with some dyed Finn she had. As it is my habit when visiting spinners to divest their shelves of any Spin-Offs I haven’t read, I also conveniently came across an article on combing in an old issue (Winter 1999?). Loads of fun!
The combs in this picture are small ones my brother made for mum some years back and they are beautiful to use. The Finn in the picture is unblended, but we also had play around putting it with some other fibres and practising colour blending on the combs.
Sadly, the whole week couldn’t be spent in playing in wool (and alpaca), I did talk to Neil a bit and hung out with my sister. I leave you with a family photo - enjoying Aussie fish and chips in the traditional way, straight out of the paper in the late evening sunshine by the river.
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