Winter Wool Sale

On Valentine's Day, my husband took me on a fun, fiber-filled outing...the Winter Wool Sale held by Bide a Wee Farm and Whistlestop Farm, held at Whistlestop Farm in Hillsboro, Oregon. It was a sunny day for the most part. Now I must say that we have had a moratorium on fleece purchases at my place for several years, as I still have lots of unspun fiber around that needs to be processed; but my husband encouraged me to look over the fleeces for sale, and we did end up buying about a half dozen small ones that caught our fancy. There were a great variety of Shetland, Jacob, and Navajo Churro fleeces, along with a few that had been crossbred with other breeds. It was such fun to look over the fleeces, and feel the soft, greasy fiber on each one!

After we had spent quite a while admiring and inspecting the fleeces, we whittled the number down to what we felt we could afford, and purchased them. They had some chairs set out around a fire pit for spinners to gather, and my husband brought my trusty Ashford Traveller from the car, along with my basket of fiber, so I could sit and spin for a while by the fire, along with several other spinners. What fun! We chatted about spinning and fiber as we sat and spun.

While I visited with the other spinners, my husband entertained himself by taking pictures of the sheep with his new camera. See the variety of lovely natural colors in the fleece?

I suppose it wasn't your typical Valentine's Day celebration, but it suited us to a "T". Such a lovely way to spend a winter morning!