Spot on Wool Working

I love to work with my wool. I should call it 'wool playing.' This is a brief description of how I create with the wool from my flock of Jacob sheep. First, I start with a lamb. Isn't he cute ? Well, he grows, and so does his wool. About once a year all my sheep need their wool sheared off. I call the shearer ( who is also a dear friend, Dirt) and he shears them. This means he cuts off their wool.
After being sheared I have a lot of black and white wool. I separate it into piles of black, white, and in some piles I put the black and white together. Now the wool is ready for washing.
Some of the wool I will dye during the washing process. Isn't this just yummy looking wool? Always reminds me of cotton candy, but a lot more fun, though not tasty...............................
After washing and drying the fleeces (wool) they are carded. This is my little table carder. A carder is basically a tool that combs the wool. After carding I have batts of lovely wool, not unlike the batts you buy at the fabric store for putting into quilts.
These are some little batts of my Jacob sheep wool. You can see the different shades of black through white I get just from one sheep. White, black, and varying shades of gray...depending on how much of the black and white I card together.
I spin up a lot of wool with my trusty spinning wheel. Picture of spinning wheel is in sidebar. I love to sit on my porch and spin and watch the birds. Often I listen to books on tape while I spin.
I will weave a lot of the yarn into fabric or table runners on my loom. The table runner shown above was the very first project I wove COMPLETELY out of yarn hand spun and hand dyed by me.
This is another table runner I wove, with finer hand spun wool, after I got much better at spinning.
Most of my fleece I save to make rugs. I have fun thinking up designs for my rugs, chickens are a favorite theme of mine....

I might locker hook a pillow like this.

Or I might locker hook a rug like this....leaves are another of my favorite themes.

The possibilities are endless, and the wonderful, magical thing about this is I get to start with these...lambs! I am so thankful to be able to keep sheep, and work (play) with their wool ~~~