It's Shearin' Season!

For most spring is heralded by bulbs blooming, the return of morning birdsong, the snowmelt, lighter days... But nothing says "SPRING!" to us fiber fiends like shearing season. It's an exciting time in the land of fiber as the junkies trawl the various websites of independent wool producers looking for that Golden Fleece. It could be Cormo, Alpaca, Merino or Vicuna, but nothing is more clear a sign of spring than sinking your hands into a nice raw fleece.

After a ridiculously long wait, I finally got my handcards on Tuesday. I love the cards, but I'm really disappointed in the store I got them from. The service was pretty abominable for the amount of money in roving and tools I spent with them (over $150). It's really neither here nor there, though, because my new Schacht cards rule. I could not be happier with them. Instead of a cotton backing, it's some sort of pleather and they're way more fantasticer. Here they are with Coopworth Rolags from SuDan Farm in Oregon:



You can see the difference between the uncarded fleece and my rolags here:



After carding about 20 rolags, I realized this was going to spin up into a damn yooglay yarn (or at least a damn boring one), so I looked up in one of my spinning books how to make a tweed yarn and I am TOTALLY making this into a tweed. I'm thinking the tweed flecks will be a pretty steel blue to offset the blue/gray/brown of the fleece.

I've been working on this entry for 4 days...and I have just run out of steam. So with that, I leave you with a pretty spring bouquet: