A few F Os

About ten years ago, a friend mentioned that he had a friend who raised sheep just to get the agricultural discount for her property tax. Would I be interested in some free wool? Naievely, I said, "Oh, yes!" We came home from a fourth of July vacation to find twenty five (25!) garbage bags full of fleece. It was what happens to wool when the shepherd doesn't give a rat's rump about it. It was full of poop and sticks and mud. I spent three days with a long table set up in the driveway, just skirting the stuff and throwing away garage bags full of useless matted fiber. About a third of each fleece was dreck.

The owner had economized by doing the shearing herself. There's an art to shearing, and she didn't have it. For starters, she sheared out in the field, so the wool picked up grass and dirt on the inside as well as the outside. (Real shearers, make sure the shearing floor is swept clean every time they start another sheep.) And she was careful not to nick the sheep, so sometimes she had to run the clippers over a spot twice, producing lots of short-cuts and half-length fibers.

I washed wool all that summer long and still didn't get it all clean, so I wound up taking the whole mass of it (A Honda Civic full!)to a comercial processor (Fantasy Fibers in Canby, Oregon. Wonderful service!) and wound up with pounds and pounds and pounds of roving. After years of dilligent spinning (and gifting) yesterday, I finally finished spinning the last of it! Yayyyy! Now I can buy nice, interesting roving with a clear conscience.





So to celebrate, I pulled out the tube socks and put in the final couple of inches while watching Survivor.

Next, an idiotically simple lace scarf in bamboo, and a stash-busting flurry of washcloths for zombie knitting.


And the weatherman says it might get up to 72 today. Yayyyyy!!!! (Roxie running around the back yard with her tongue lolling like a labrador puppy mad with joy.) I do love sunshine and warmth!