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!

Preparing a Raw Fleece: Flick Carding the Locks

I was recently given some raw Romney fleece, and thought it would be a good opportunity to share how I prepare a fleece for spinning.  Many thanks to Andy and Pam Walton of Lake View Farm, who donated the fleece, and to our friend Tyson for setting aside the best of the fleece for us.  You made this post possible!

A raw fleece consists of many locks of fiber.  A lock is a group of fibers that "hangs" together, much like a lock of hair.  Here is a lock of fleece:

The upper left end of the lock is the butt end.  This is the end that was attached to the sheep; hence, it is usually cleaner than the other end.  The end at the lower right is the tip end.  Often (though not always) this end comes to a point.  Technically, I guess this would be two locks, since I see two tips here.

To prepare a fleece for washing and carding or combing, I first separate out each lock and (when necessary) remove any foreign material, such as hay, seeds, dead bugs, dung tags, and even on rare occasions a flap of skin that came off with the fleece.   Here you can see some hay in the fleece.

Next, I flick card it to separate the fibers and release the dirt.  This is the tool I use for this procedure:

As you can see, this tool has prepared many fleeces.  Working with raw fleece is by nature a dirty, greasy job, and my flick carder reflects this.  The flick card has many wire bristles that brush through the fiber to untangle it.  I start by holding the butt end of the fiber tightly between my thumb and fingers; then I use the flick carder to untangle and separate the tip end of the lock.

See how the fibers fan out and become much less dense?  Next, I turn the lock around and grab the tips tightly with my fingers and thumb.

I then use the flick carder on the butt end, to complete untangling the lock.

Here are the flicked locks, ready to be washed:

I will wash them by soaking them in hot water and dish detergent in my washing machine, being careful not to let them agitate.

Preparing fleece is a time-consuming pursuit, which probably explains the numerous as-yet-untouched fleeces in The Barn (aka our garage).  I have learned that, if I don't do this right away, I will probably not get to it...ever.  But I do enjoy getting my hands into the greasy fleece and creating order from the chaos of the unflicked locks.  And there is nothing quite like taking the raw fleece all the way through to a finished product!

Mission: Impossible!

The Challenge

Last weekend, we attempted what my husband called “Mission: Impossible!”—selling warm, wool products on a 90+ degree summer day. We knew it would be a hard sell; after all, we’ve been doing outdoor festival sales for over 10 years, now, so we have a bit of experience. But we were willing to give it a try, since we got into the Tualatin Crawfish Festival at the very last minute, and it was an event we’ve never done before.

We had set up the canopy in our space the evening before, to save a little time in the morning. My husband had made some new wooden racks for the booth, so we spent a little extra time deciding how to configure the booth (to be accurate, I spent a little extra time worrying about how to configure the booth; my husband already had it planned out in his head). We hurried to get racks and tables set up, then started placing the product out on them. This is always a challenge, since we have more product than display space. But we managed to get everything in place before 10:00 AM, our deadline.

We had opted not to use any “walls” on our awning, since there was no likelihood of rain in the forecast, but the booths to either side of us had walls up, so effectively we had walls on the two sides of the structure. This theoretically could have shielded us a bit from the sun, but since the sun was at our backs most of the day, it didn’t have much effect. It did, probably, shield us some from the breeze, which was intermittent throughout the day. This was a Good Thing in that it kept things from blowing off the racks and tables, but it was a Bad Thing in terms of our comfort, as the breeze would have afforded some cooling as we sweated out the day.

There was no booth behind us, so we were not shielded from the sun at all from that direction. Did I mention that the sun was behind us?? We kept trying to move farther into the booth to get into the shade, but that meant that we were blocking some of the product from public view. Oh, well…when you do a crafts booth at an outdoor event, you learn to be flexible.

The Cacophony

It is always interesting to watch people’s reactions when they walk by our booth. Some are so focused on their goal (undoubtedly something on the other end of the festival grounds) that they don’t even give our booth a glance. Others glance in, see the cacophony of colors, shapes and textures, and hurry on by. Some dismiss the booth with an “Oh…just knitting” kind of look. Some smile apologetically or say hello, then continue on past. Every so often, some brave soul ventures into the booth. Again, there are quite a variety of reactions:

• The Quick, Disinterested Tourist: After a quick once-around, the visitor’s eyes glaze over, and he departs rapidly.

• The Fiber Addict: This person is quite interested in how the items are made, but is not at all interested in buying; after all, he could always make it himself.

• The Poverty-Stricken Admirer: This would-be customer is very gratifying, if a bit disappointing. If he had remembered his checkbook today, he really would have bought something. Everything is very beautiful, though.

• The Obtuse/Ignorant/Unobservant NonCustomer: “I have one just like this at home!” [Grrrr….!  Do you realize that this is a handmade product from an original design?  The one you bought at WalMart is probably not quite the same, if you look at it more carefully.]

• The Distracted Shopper With Small Children and/or Pets**:

          This category merits subpoints. Several favorites:

        • The Touchy-Feely Child: A small child who wants to touch everything (probably a Future Fiber Artist), whose mother is so involved in the shopping experience that she does not enforce the Don’t Touch! Rule she had stated upon entering the booth. This child often repeats the phrase, “Look, Mommy!” while holding each and every item precariously over the dusty ground.

       • The Cheeto-Fingered Girl: This one placed her bright orange forefinger firmly on the tip of the nose of our white head form…it was scarred (or rather, stained) for life! And her father pulled her away just as she was about to touch the white scood that was on it.

       • The Little Big Spender: This child, usually 7 or under, wants to buy everything in the shop, but only has a dollar. He has to ask how much every item costs, so he can decide if he can buy it, since he seems to have left his parents behind at the last booth.

       • The Visiting Dog: We once did several shows at a farm market, which was inhabited by a very sweet dog, named Sally. Sally loved to eat ears of corn, and her favorite place to do this was inside our booth. If we were lucky, she would repose under a table. (Come to think of it, we were the visitors!)  We periodically had to remove a half-chewed ear of corn from the middle of our booth, or shoo Sally out so that a customer could get close to our display.

       • The Inquisitive Dog: This dog, whose distracted owner is very interested in our shop, wants to explore everything it can reach, and touch it with its wet, inquisitive nose. Sometimes the dog will get its leash entangled around one of our table legs.

       • The Runaway Stroller: One time, our table was actually run down by a runaway stroller, which was thankfully empty at the time. Personally, I think the toddler pushed the stroller downhill to see what would happen.

**Please note that I am very fond of small children and pets.

• The Perfectionist: This shopper could potentially be a customer, if I had any products that were exactly the right color, shape, or size. Unfortunately, they are all just a little bit off.

• The Tease: Sometimes it seems that a shopper tries on everything in the booth, without ever having any intention of buying. This often seems to happen when there are two shoppers together. They seem to be really interested in several items, but end up nonchalantly sallying out of the booth, after having messed up the entire display.

• The BUYER (Woohoo!)!!: This shopper actually finds something they, or someone else they know, would like or use, and they have the ability to pay for it. This is our FAVORITE RESPONSE of all, though probably the least frequent.

It is almost painful to watch people as they look at warm hats and scarves on a stiflingly hot day. People will almost recoil as they imagine trying those items on, and they don’t even seem able to process the fact that we have airy, lacy items like doilies and cool, lace-covered glass paperweights. Such is the state of the Fiber Booth on a hot summer’s day.

I should bring this post to a close. Perhaps I should change the title to “Mission Improbable”, as we did manage to sell a few items, after all.