Farm, Fleece

I got the chance to go too the PA farm show on Wednesday and had a wonderful time. The reason I go on Wednesdays is that’s when they have the sheep to shawl contest and they have a fleece auction after the contest. One of the other things I like to check out is the butter sculpture, (Yes I said butter). They carve life size or close to life size humans and of course a cow out of butter. It takes a lot of time sculpt this and a lot of cold air to keep this sculpture from melting so they have it in a glass cooler so it will keep thru out the show.

The sheep to shawl contest is an amazing feet to produce a shawl in 2 and a half hours. What helps is the looms are already warped, but still you have a lot of weft to spin up to make a shawl. After the winners are announced the shawls them selves are auctioned off. This year there was a State Farm record set when the sixth place shawl went for $3400.00. All the shawls were beautiful and any one of them could have won. I am sorry I was not able to take any pictures of the contest or the shawls. I was to far away.

I was able to get a fleece; this year is a second place winner. The entry tag says it’s a Hampshire-Suffolk, Shropshire-Southdown Ram fleece. So what I was doing yesterday (besides many other things) was spinning up a sample of the fleece to see how it spins and washes up. It spun well and washes up very easily, the only thing I was unaware of when I got it was how scratchy it is. So this fleece will not be used for anything to be worn close to the skin.

I also have a lamb fleece that I never made a sample of. So I decided to make up a sample of this one as well and that came out just like the ram fleece just much, much, much softer.

Well I guess I have a lot of spinning I have to do. So I best get to it.