Thursday, September 3, 2009

Shearing Update

Yesterday we sheared Louisa, it took us about 2 hours, luckily she was pretty patient with us. She looks a little gawky right now, but beautifully white and curly. Not sure how many pounds her fleece was yet. We were too tired to weigh it or get pictures of her lastnight. We are going to shear Eleanor tonight or tomorrow. The girls have to work today and tomorrow so it will depend on how tired they are. I will get pictures of them, with their new look, in the next couple of days.

First Attemps @ Spinning

This is Caitlin and my first skeins of yarn, that we have spun with our new wheel. We spun them from roving that was given to us, by our friend Kim, from White Barn Farm. This is where Cait bought the CVM lambs. You can see the roving in the basket, under the yarn. Roving is the sheared wool after it has been washed and carded. Carding can be done with hand carders, that look like big flat brushes with fine wire teeth or with a drum carder. The drum carder have the combs on a wheel. The drum carder can make the roving much faster than hand carding. We haven't had a chance to try ours out yet. So the next thing is getting some wool washed, so we can give it a go!

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Shearing

Caitlin and I decided lastnight to try our hand at shearing. We started out with just doing their necks. It went pretty good! They were really well behaved for us. They actually seemed to enjoy it. We are planning on working on their bodies today.