Butter and Learning to Spin

Today I am washing Butter's fleece.  Butter is a Border Leicester ram.  Here is his fleece before washing:

Crinkle fries, eh?  Here's a close-up:

This year was his first shearing.  Lovely butter-colored fleece.  Except, when his fleece hit the hot soapy water, it turned white.  Oh.  Okay.  Butter should be renamed Snowball I guess.  HA.  The fleece is currently outside drying on my deck.  I have to keep an eye on it, though, because my German Shephard mix, Sasha, thinks it is beautiful as well... and would make a good lunch.  On a side note - do I have the only Shepherd who's ears don't stick up? 

I'll post pictures of the fleece once it is dry so you can see the difference.

Marion asked if it was hard to learn how to spin.  I think it depends on how you learn things.  Some people need hands-on instruction, and some people can learn through books on their own.  I'm a book person.  When I decided to do something with my fleeces, I went to the library and took out lots of books on sheep, how to judge a fleece's worth, and, finally, how to spin the wool into yarn.  I then bought myself a hand spindle from Ashford (there are tons of spindles out there) so I could try to spin it by hand, and it wouldn't cost me an arm and leg to try.  A spinning wheel was way over the top for me at the time.  I didn't even know if I would like it.  Well, after following the directions in the "how to spindle" book, it wasn't going fast enough for me.  On to the wheel (although it did take some loud begging...).  I bought an Ashford Traditional Double Drive (I didn't even know what a double drive was then, and I'm still really not sure....)  I put the wheel together myself and spun wool the first day.  WOW.  Pure joy to be making yarn out of fiber.  People actually did this in Pioneer days!  I was so hip.  This wool was my very own first skein!  I loved making it.  This wool was . . . . pure. crap.

I still have a lot of the first skeins I spun while learning.  When and if you learn to spin, keep these first skeins.  They are art!  I will tell you, though, that some people love to spindle, but not to use a spinning wheel, and vice versa.  If you try spindling and find you don't like it, that doesn't necessarily mean you will not like spinning on a spinning wheel.  Try both if you can and see what you like better.

Then..... I'll show you my crap if you show me yours first!  :)

Comments

[Ava]

I have enough crap at home thank you. Lets see if this comment ends up in your spam folder. Maybe i am not doing something right. Do I have to sign up for typepad in order to be able to post a comment?

[Marion]

I love the fleece from Snowba uh, Butter. And I'm the book kind of girl too. I do what you did, get a book, read up on the internet, ask friends. But mostly I read books. And thanks for the mention.

[Marion]

Oh, and Sasha is cute. I like the floppy ears. My pits have floppy ears.