Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!

This Saturday marked my first time witnessing sheep being sheared. It was also my first time up close and personal with half a sheep fleece, LOL :D

My butch and I went along with a local spinning guild to a day at the farm in San Ramon. I spun and spun and spun. I got a ginormous bag of fleece I acquired for free assessed and deemed fit to spin. I watched a woman churn butter and bought three tiny hand-lathed wodden bowls for $1 each. And I watched a LOT of sheep get shorn. It was really pretty cool, the ones that they were able to get the fleece off in one piece :D

The more experienced spinners scoffed at the free fleece, dubbing it poor quality for spinning, but heck...it was free! So, me and another spinner there split one. My butch ran to the car to get a bag to put the smelly, dirty, poop-filled fleece into and then we carted it home in the trunk. I washed it three times in the large kitchen sink (boy, was I thankful for my massive double farm sink in the kitchen that day!) and then spun it in the washer to get the water out and then left it on baking cooling racks in the tub for a day and a half to dry.

I am now the proud owner of a lump of fleece full of sticks and burrs and grass and other unknows that I have to go through little piece by piece and pick out : Then, I have to get it carded somehow and then I can SPIN it!

and then I can never ever think about getting a raw fleece again :

But won't it just be the most amazing, cool thing to have a knit item that comes from the yarn I spun myself, which came from the fleece I cleaned and prepared myself, which I saw shorn off the white wooly sheep?! I think that is just about the most cool thing ever and I will have to implode once it's done :D

In other crafty news, I have a spindle full of beautiful thin yarn that I am going to put on my niddy noddy tonight and wash and see how much is there :D I am quite proud of it- expect pictures soon :P

I also bought 5 wool sweaters at the thrift store last night and washed them in really hot water to felt them. They went from sweaters that would fit me to sweaters that would fit my 4 year old, and it was DAMN cool!

Now that it's felted, I can cut them up and use it as felted fabric or make purses out of them. I'm so psyched, they're beautiful patterned sweaters and one has great cables on it :) A bag in the making for sure!

Yes, I know. I have too many projects going on. And I don't care :P

Sunday afternoon, I sat in the back porch with a saw and a hammer and nails and started making a small gauge loom to make dishcloths on. It went well, but my drill was low on juice, so I only got about 6 holes drilled before it wimped out on me. If I get home tonight before dark, I will go in the backyard and drill the rest. Yay!

So many crafts, so little time *whistful sigh*