The Good, the Bad and the Woolly...

[msfledermaus]

This weekend had lots of ups and downs so far...

There was some unhappy drama at the co-op involving some shoving and a catfight. It's been very stressful. This week it seems like every scary mean crazy person just had to push their luck that much harder. We're still dealing with a lot of the fallout here, and I've been trying very hard to do sensible things and not let my baser instincts take over. (These instincts are very strong, and involve cutlery. Bad Maus. Bad, bad Maus.)

Anyway, today was a much much better and less stressful thing. I went to the sheep harvest festival in Lake Elmo today, and felt much better playing with the bunnies and watching all the spinners. I bought lots of beautiful wool. I petted more bunnies. I visited the lanbs and had to be physically restrained from buying small black baby lambs to take home with me. "Nono, really, I'll tell the neighbors it's a dog, pleeeeease, I wants it!"

Of course when I came home with my wool-stash I found out that Ben the neighbor and Leslie are taking care of a sick ram lamb here on the Island today. I'll go visit later and see how he's doing, maybe do some petting:) But meanwhile, here are pictures...

Comments

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

You should get the rabbit. Eventually, you'd get enough "wool" to spin.

[msfledermaus.livejournal.com]

There was a lady combing out the bunny and spinning the fluff. *Siiiigh*

One of these days...everybody's bugging me for a bunny. Someday when I'm not working so much, maybe...

[roadskoller.livejournal.com]

I've always wanted to know how they washed all of the smelly lanolin out of the raw wool?

[msfledermaus.livejournal.com]

I can answer that question...you wash it...a *lot*. We're talking about four or five rinses, or until it's all clean, whichever comes first. And you have to go easy on the agitation, or you will end up with a huge big piece of felt...

Then you let it all dry, then you can card it, dye it, roll it all up into a big ball and spin it up into the fluffy yarn of your choice. I bought some lovely gray wool/silk combination with silver glitter all through it...apparently someone had a glitter sheep:)

[roadskoller.livejournal.com]

I'm really impressed.
How do you dye it?
After you wash it, or before?
I need to see the whole process because I'm really interested.
Google might be my friend.

[msfledermaus.livejournal.com]

You dye it after you wash it, otherwise the lanolin keeps the dye from taking well.

I know knitty.com has some good dyeing stuff in the Knittyspin section. And yeah, Google has lots of cool links to sites that walk you through the process.
(It's how I learned:)

[sirreal13.livejournal.com]

I hope all the mean crazies get voted off the island, literally...

[msfledermaus.livejournal.com]

me too. I've had enough, and enough is too much!!!