Probably insane. . .

Fleece cleaned with grass seeds

Well. I have somehow woven my way back into my maker past. When we picked Jasper up from the ranch in Emmett, I told his owner that I was a hand spinner. Remember I was at a sheep farm, so my earlier life as an ardent fiber person seemed to bubble up unbidden. He showed me this lovely colored fleece, and joked that if I took Jasper, I could have the fleece. 

I still have one of my spinning wheels, and my carding machine, so I was really pretty thrilled. 

I hope I can be forgiven, but I forgot how much work this is. And though I saw some grass seeds in the raw fleece, I really didn't appreciate the magnitude of the issue. I didn't take a picture of the raw fleece, but the one above shows what it looks like after washing, which is called scouring. 

Fiber, teased not carded

The next step is picking, or teasing. You pull the fibers apart, and all of the dirt particles and vegetable matter falls out of it, in preparation for carding. Right? Wrong. I lost a lot of dirt in the process, but the grass seeds need to be picked out one at a time. And the fiber has wrapped it's little scales around them. 

I reasoned that the carding process not only straightens the fibers, but it also lets some of the vegetable matter (called VM by the pros) drop through. So I fed the teased locks into the carder. Oh boy.

I got out my tweezers to pick out the grass. There was So Much of it. Once the carder revealed the fiber more fully, I realized the trouble I was in. 

After 3 times through the carder, teasing apart, tweezering (is that a word?), examining every inch of the batt, I ran it through one more time, but this time with about 1/3 (by volume) of Jasper's undercoat. He has some Great Pyrenees in his blood, so the undercoat is soft. It will halo a bit when I spin and knit it. It will be wonderful. But! I spend hours on this one batt, and there are probably, oh, a hundred batts worth of wool!

Finished batt and setup on my clay table

 

 

On one hand, what wealth! On the other, at my age, do I really want to spend hundreds of hours Getting Ready to Spin? So I can have a ton of yarn with which to knit?

Oy.

I love these processes that make us realize what civilization simply gives us, and we have NO IDEA what it takes. We even grumble about the price. Growing food does that, too. My garden takes hours from planting the seeds in March to canning stuff in the fall. And it doesn't begin to feed us. It's a life embellishment. Hand spun yarn is also an embellishment. 

How to be begin to value it? 

For me, since it's about the process, spending years learning and making it was the pleasure. An interesting challenge. A skill to be gained. Having the handmade item is lovely, even better to give to someone who can appreciate it, but I'd never do it for the product. . the hand-knit sweater, mittens, whatever. It would be foolish, since I can't possibly afford to pay for it in dollars. I pay for it in time. And sometimes frustration.

Batt closeup

 So, after making this batt, and preparing to spin it into yarn, I also contacted several small batch wool processors. It turns out there are a lot of them. I'll, perhaps, end up paying in $'s and time for this yarn, but as I age, I'm trying to consciously chose how to spend my time.

You'd think I'd be smarter by now. . .

But then, I did get Jasper in the bargain.

Who's up for a belly rub?