Yarn Along - Meanwhile, Back At The Wool Mill

Somewhere between shearing and skirting (months ago) and heading to the mill came washing and deciding if snipping the sunbleached tips off Baaxter's lamb fleece was going to make enough difference to justify the effort.  Miss B and I pulled out two samples (also months ago :-o), snipped the tips off one and not the other and then combed and carded each and...

...yes, there was a significant difference.  Baaxter Black should be as black as possible so I snipped as many sunbleached tips as I could stand.  If I ever have another black lamb, I'm going to do that while the fleece is still on the sheep.  It was a Job.

So here's Baby B. all washed, snipped and ready to go to Ohio Valley (at least a month ago - what is going on around here?!?).

I'm sure I am speaking for everyone in saying how comforting it is to see Beth and Darlene still running these wonderful old machines.

The wool is dumped into the back of the machine, comes up over the top...

...down into the beginning of the rollers...

...and out as beautiful ready to spin (if you can just find the time!) roving.

Here's a short video:

We took up seven fleeces that day - Billy Belly, Allie, Henri, Ford, Baaxter, Woody and one for Miss B from shearing at Kathy's (also months ago and still not on the blog even though there are some great pictures to share...I think...if I remember back that far.)  Am I ever going to get caught up???

Maisie's headed to the mill tomorrow along with Auntie Lila, Daniel's stunning first shear from last year that I finally talked myself into washing and processing and the dark green Renny.  I'm excited!

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I listened to A Cold Day For Murder by Dana Stabenow (first in a series based in Alaska) this past week in hopes it would remind me of cooler/cold weather...but it didn't.  It's just plain hot.  To make matters worse, I somehow (and this is actually a pretty funny story, so don't let me forget to share it) ended up jumping into several really miserable (because of the heat) projects outside...in the midday sun...when I could have been inside spinning or knitting!

Joining in with Ginny...