Wensleydale Locks

This is a new project for me.  These are lovely Wensleydale locks made from the wool from last years' lambs. I took the photo just before shearing.   The wool has these lovely locks and I have dyed these with two different greens and produced the locks which I call  'Ocean Spray'    They can be used in felting projects and for tail spinning.   As I am working with the fleece I will gradually build a variety of locks dyed in different colours.   Sadly I cannot spin them myself as my Donegal wheel does not have a jumbo flyer.

Autumn Glory

This is my latest yarn,  all autumnal colors.  A basic green with browns, reds and yellows.  The really exciting thing about it is that I spun much finer than my usual yarns and it has a 12 to 14 wpi.  I have not finished spinning it all yet and still have to set the spin and then I will be listing it on my Etsy website

A Big Day for the Lambs

Today my lambs were weaned.  The photos were taken about an hour after they had been separated from their Mums.  They do not seem to be too bothered and are enjoying some young sweet grass.   All the lambs near the edge of the field seem to be the cross bred lambs.   Heads all shapes and colours.   The main thing is that neither Mums nor the lambs seemed to be too disturbed

A busy day

Pure Wensleydale Fleece Drying

Wnsleydale X Suffolk Yarn

  Dyed Wensleydale X Suffolk Wool

A busy day today starting with washing some pure Wensleydale fleece and setting the spin on the yarn that I have spun from the fiber that is seen in an earlier blog on my drum carder.  A sunny day and all these were dry by the evening and now I have to weigh and measure the hanks of yarn and think of a name for it.

The pure Wensleydale wool is still pretty dirty but by the time I have teased it out most of the dirt will have fallen out as it has no lanolin to hold it.  I intend to spin this without dying it.  You can see how different it is to the Wensleydale cross fleece

The last photo is of Wensleydale X Suffolk which has for some reason taken the dye green at the tips and yellower towards the cut end.  Not sure why this has happened as I have dyed lots of the fleece and this hasn't happened with other colours

Some stages of preparing fiber for spinning

The next lot of wool from Susie's lamb is underway.  I was lucky to get a fine day to dry some of it outside on my slate table.  The wool dries so much faster outside if I get the weather.   Next into the dying pan, yellow this time but I am only using a little mixed in with the blue.   This I do with my drum carder,  hard work and slow as I can only feed in a little fiber at a time and before it goes onto the carder it has to be dried again and then teased apart by hand or it will break the teeth on the carder.  Almost ready to spin,  most of the work done and now the real fun

Setting the spin

Just finished the first yarn from the wool from Susie's lamb.  This yarn is made from 3 separate dye lots which I blended on my drum carder  and added a little yellow, red and orange wool which were from dye lots that I did last year with the wool from Susie's 2010 lamb.  I also added a little Angelina which gives the yarn a little sparkle.  I have over 800grams of the color way and it is Aran/worsted to chunky weight.  I have listed some of it on my Etsy web site, www. etsy.com/shop/MarkreeWoolCraft  If you are interested in more please contact me on my e-mail, mary@markreewoolcraft.com.
 The yarn that is hanging is a process called 'setting the spin'  the last part of producing yarn. The wool is soaked in warm water, I add a little essential oil, and then hang it out to dry with weights attached.  This takes any kinks out of the yarn and is a bit like putting your hair in curlers and it makes the twist permanent

Susie's Lamb

This is Susie's lamb that was born in 2011. Susie is my only non Wensleydale sheep and I have had her  since she was a lamb.  She had a very heavy fleece which I have just started to prepare and spin.  The wool is beautiful, very long and soft and I am really enjoying working with it.  It will be interesting to find out how much wool she had after washing when most of the natural lanolin has been removed