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 
Dollar-store pet brushes!!! What a great idea! I’ve been trying to decide what to do with some raw fiber my mom gave me. I don’t have any hand cards and can’t really justify the expense of shipping it off for processing, but dollar-store pet brushes just might do the trick. It will either help me process this fiber or it will drive me batty enough to realize how much better it would be to shell out some money and have someone else hassle with it. :-) Thanks for the tip!
Your rolags look so much more even then mine do! How do you do it? Mine are thicker on the brush and thinner in the free fiber. Maybe the wool is cut too short?