Here and there, this week, I’ve been making some first forays with Eshme (my Shetland fleece). I’ve taken a bit of a break from the wool washing (to commence again tomorrow evening), and have begun sampling it in a bit greater depth. Of course, I’ve been spinning teeny-weeny bits on the drop spindles since day one (when I washed a few locks in the event site’s ladies’ room!), just too see how the different preparations look and feel.
I think I’ve chosen my goal for the bulk of this fleece, and will get into the starry-eyed details a bit later, but I am pretty sure I’ll be giving most of it a very thorough washing. As a test, though, and because it’s really something you can’t get from commercial rovings, I washed up a few bags in cooler temperatures (to leave some lanolin in), to play with spinning “in the grease”.
I carded it up (with my “mini-carders”, aka. dollar-store pet brushes):
I rolled it into little mini-rolags:
I tried woolen-style spinning, on the wheel:
And of course, I’ve had some helpful supervision throughout the processes:
Tomorrow I’ll show you the results!
Aemmeleia's Ephemera 