I went to a sheep-shearing party at Winterberry Farm over the weekend, where I got to feast my eyes and hands on a whole lot of fiber. You only get to feast your eyes, sorry.
This is a sheep being shorn. It’s kind of hard to tell what’s going on in the picture, but it was really cool to watch it happen. The shearer worked really fast, and the wool just fell away from the sheep- in the end it looked like he had extracted this skinny little animal from a big wool blanket or something. It kind of reminded me of a snake shedding its skin, actually.
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Bags of wool. Each one contains the coat of one animal that had just been shorn.
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Here’s some of the wool they had for sale. This has been washed and dyed. I spent a while staring at it, because it was beautiful.
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Don’t you want to stick your face in it or dunk a baby in it or something?
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Oh, the roving. This is wool that’s been washed and dyed and carded and then rolled up into these light, soft balls. ……
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This is what I brought home with me, along with some goose eggs I’ll tell you all about sometime. In detail.
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[...] in case you’re wondering, I used a ball of wool roving as my hat model in this picture. It was exactly the right size. I realize that it looks like I maybe [...]