Hi everyone, well now that shearing is finished and I have tidied and cleaned up the wool it is now ready for sale.
If anyone would like to visit us in Springfield, Canterbury to talk fleece either in the raw or carded, please contact me and we will arrange a viewing or send samples to you.
The price of the fleece depends on the quantity and whether you want the fleece in the raw (as is) or whether you want it ready for spinning (washed, carded, gilled) in which case the price will vary. You will also be given information on the individual animal as part of my ‘Living flock’ process.
At this point I do not have enough spun wool to offer for sale unfortunately.
The shearing is finished and so I spent the next four days looking over the ten fleece to get rid of vegetable matter and short locks… and of course clean up any ‘dirty’ wool.
Luckily I recently purchased a sorting table which was very useful in laying out the fleece and then sorting for matter. I am not a professional sorter by any means, but it is cleaner and tidier than doing nothing.
The fleeces are dated and individually named from each sheep so we can identify each fleece.
The fleece below is the first that I wanted to trial for spinning in the raw (unwashed). The sheep this is from is Number 3, Bob. You may know him because I have talked about him a lot; he is the throw-back to the Gute. He is much taller than the other sheep, has always had a lighter fleece than any of the others, and did have a shadow of horns for a while.
His fleece is lighter this year than last year, see below for 2019 fleece in comparison to this year.
The difference in the colours from year to year are very interesting as I thought that the wool would get darker as the sheep aged, but this is not the case here.
I will be back with more information on the fleece later….
We are waiting for our first lambs…. which are due any day.
The flock are now shorn and I have my work cut out in cleaning and preparing the fleece for sale and for me to spin.
We have a very good (and have to say patient) shearer who looks after our shearing twice a year. The gotties fleece tends to felt very easily if left too long on the sheep so they are being shorn every 8 to 9 months.
Getting them into the yard can be very tricky but thank goodness we have 2 good yards so if we only get a few in first, then we transfer them to the other yard and open the yard gate, put a few nuts on the ground and usually the others will come into the yard on their own. We tend to entice the flock with nuts rather than ‘drive’ them into the yards. I have a very capable husband who is very handy at driving the flock into the yards… sometimes I get a little impatient with them…but he manages to entice them.
The flock are being shorn now because the ‘girls’ are due to lamb in about 2 weeks time. This means that they will be ‘clean’ and have nice free teats for the lambs.
The next part of this process is for me to sort and clean the fleece of vegetable matter and take out the short-end parts of the clip, then I will label the boxes with the name, number and year of shearing.
I have started the sorting process, and will keep 3 or 4 out of the 10 fleeces for my own use, whether I do the whole process myself or get some spun up by commercial spinning is yet to be decided.
Next time I will have photos of the sorted fleeces ready for spinning, washing or selling.
So it seems that we are going to have another little girl added to our family (not me haha). I have decided to spin and knit up some alpaca wool that I swapped for some of my Gotland Pelt sheep wool. The alpaca is great for baby garments as it is soft and calming on baby skin.
The fleece I have started is a cream, which I did think might take a dyeing quite well, but at this point I will just knit it up as a jersey and experiment with dyeing on the next spin I do with this fleece.
The fleece (wool) is very soft but it does not have much elasticity so I did think of blending another ‘sheep’ wool in with the Alpaca but in this instance I have decided to do a straight 100% Alpaca and see how the garment turns out. The next spin I do with the fleece may include some other wool, and I would like to see how the Gotland and Alpaca work together as well.
If you do not know these animals, I have included a photo below (not one of my photos).
Over the next week or so I will post the finished garment…. in the mean time we have our own flock to shear today…so I will also be posting photos on the shear…fleeces…and other interesting events.
The day has a typical ‘spring-summer’ feel; muggy, cloudy, cool enough to wear something on the arms but too hot for jerseys.
Since the shearing day a couple of weeks ago I have preliminary skirted most of the fleeces so anyone inquiring about fleece please contact me, I am happy to send samples to you if you do not – or can not visit us personally. Anyone is welcome to come and view the sheep and their products.
On another note: I have decided to create a sample hank of yarn from each sheep and will keep photos of each stage for any prospective buyers.
The first sheep I decided to try this experiment with was Bob #3, one of the lambs from the foundation ewe called Chocolate; Bob is our look-alike Gute so I was interested in his fleece because of the quality and colour.
Bob on the right in full fleece
Bob shorn and supporting his new earring #3
What I noticed with this fleece is the different colours and textures; the cream near the body is soft and fluffy, to keep him warm and cool, the grey outer coat is fine and the red are the guard hairs. The wool spun up lovely and fine, with the cream and grey mixing in similar to a worsted effect. For the first spinning I did not use the wool with the guard hair in it. (It is common knowledge that the guard hair can be very strong, but can feel rough to wear. Guard hair spun in though is excellent for weavers.)
When plied and washed it has turned out this lovely soft grey with flecks of cream in it.
The second fleece I am now working on Suzie #3. She is a foundation ewe and this is the start of her example yarn.
This is an interesting process; from sheep to yarn; I hope you enjoy the continuing story.
Hi Jackie, Thanks for your comments and yes I must post the outcomes on spinning and knitting the alpaca. regards…
Brilliant! I’m really interested to see how this turns out as I’m spinning alpaca recently gifted to me. I’ve prepped…
So … Marion had a little lamb It’s fleece was black as soot And everywhere that Marion went It’s sooty…
Well the day arrived; all flock were kept in the stockyard overnight ready for shearing in the morning. It was a lovely fine day and they all wanted to ‘get that wool’ off. We also gave them earrings for identification. Up till now I have identified them with names only, now I can follow their life with an easily identified option. The earrings are: boys on the right, as “boys are always right” says the shearer, and girls on the left.
My job starts now; I identified all sheep by the ear number and that is the number of the fleece, so I can match fleece with individual animals.
When it comes time to sell the fleece I will match up information on each of the animals; their name, birth details, parents and grandparents. This is important for us as we want people who purchase any products from us to know and understand each animal as an individual.
In the next few weeks I will post each animal’s fleece and what I hope to achieve with it.
silva kurls 
Hi Jackie, Thanks for your comments and yes I must post the outcomes on spinning and knitting the alpaca. regards…