Back to Business....

I am planning a big trip over to South Australia in March.  Primarily to visit  my dear friend and wool grower/seller, Jane, she has an online store and is a registered breeder of English Leicester sheep.  However, times are tough and we are racing to save enough for the trip.  The bonus is, I am planning on making part of the trip a business stop.  I have a few lovely customers in SA so plan on meeting them.

Dear Jane brought to light that there is an Agriculture show at Mt Barker, just out of Adelaide on the last weekend I am in the state so we are going to pool our resources and have a stall.  That way the ladies can all come to meet us and have even more variety of yummies to buy.  More on this at a later date.

But before that...tomorrow in fact, I organized a picnic for my crafty ladies in my online forum groups here in Melbourne.  I did it before xmas and everyone had such a good time that they didn't want to wait a whole year to do it again.

I had dyed all this....

To take to the picnic but I took it to spinning on Tuesday and the ladies there took a liking to quite a bit of it and I only have the merino superwash left(that is the 4 on the bottom right and the bright coloured one on the right hand end).

So I had to have a looksee at my stock and see what else I had to dye so I have some new stock to take to the picnic.

I found four lots of 200g of fibre.

firstly, Shetland humbug, it's white and brown stripes.

It's actually a lot more pink than the picture portrays.

These two are Blue faced Leicester blended with Tussah silk 70/30%

And last but not least, this one is superwashed, BlueFaced Leicester.

None of these fibres are available from the local market.  These sheep simply aren't bred in Australia.  Not that there is anything wrong with our local fleece.  NZ and Aus do do the best merino in the world and their other breeds are pretty good too.

But we are very limited in variety so this is what I am able to offer my customers.

The picnic should be fantastic.   I think it will be a spot warm but not so extreme not to sit under a tree and do a spot of chin wagging and spinning.

On a personal note...I have some finished spinning to share.

I have had this black Shetland roving sitting around for a while.  You saw the first skein at an earlier post.

Finally finished spinning it..

It's quite thick, a chunky finish, about 920mts out of just over 1kg of fibre and silk.

The coloured silk is very subtle and I don't think it'll really show up until it's knitted.

This is mine and I do plan on knitting it...but of course, if someone offered me a good price I would sell it.

One thing I must mention about commercial processors that I have noticed.

This wool had been through a thorough scouring and processed into roving.  If it hadn't I would not have been able to bring it into the country.  This simply means that the wool has been heated to a temperature such as any live seeds or bugs have perished.

I have found however that this process does not necessarily mean that the fibre is clean.

Now this is raw wool, locally sourced Polwarth, uncoated and this is the first wash.

And this is the water from fully scoured and processed Shetland after it has been spun.

I do believe that the processed wool is actually dirtier...

Reason????  When a commercial processor who does multiple breeds and colours of fleece scour, they do the white wools and process them first.  But as they go through, the moorit (brown) and black fleece go into the water last.

So while they are free of oils and sterilized of plant and bug matter, they are also full of the dirt from all the other fleeces that have come before them.

This is a real bother for me as the black roving doesn't feel very nice.  It feels scratchy and sort of sticky.  I do have to tell my ladies that this is because it is quite dirty but it will feel nice after washing.

Of course that water has nothing on your average Alpaca fleece....

Now that is really disgusting...