Skirting and washing sheep's wool

Ok, so I looked on Youtibe and jumped right in. I cannot seem to get someone to actually LET ME do anything with wool. Like carding or spinning. They want me to just watch. And I need to DO it. So I watched some videos and got the general idea.

I still have some fleeces from last spring. Plus 3 from this spring. So I took Lucinda's wool from the grain sack and started cleaning all the crap out of it. It wasn't too bad.

And got Adele's from this spring and cleaned all the crap I could find out of it.

Then washed Lucinda's wool. I don't have much room yet to dry. So just used my 2 picnic tables. Which worked great. It was a beautiful sunny day with a light breeze. So most of it's dry now.

To all you who do this all the time, how does this wool look to you? This is Lucinda's wool. She is full Finn. She's my ewe who died last year. I love her wool.

                                                            This is it on the table after skirting it.

                                         This is Adele's all spread out on the table to be skirted.

Adele is mostly Finn. Her wool was really long. First ever shearing for her, as a yearling.

Here is Lucinda's wool, washing. I still have a little bit to wash tomorrow. I used Dawn.

 

                                                And all spread out on the drying tables.

I need to go get it now. The sun is going down. But would really love some input. What do you think? Will it spin into nice yarn? That's next, after carding. Which I can do, but can't seem to get the hang of getting it off the carder in one nice piece to roll up. Practice,  practice, practice, right?

Let me know what you think please. I can take it. Really, I can. Being my very first time doing this, with no one to tell me if it's good wool or not, I think it looks good. I need to practice doing all this anyway.

Vultures...

Doing what vultures do.


I've been driving by this dead deer all week. Then started seeing vultures. So Friday, I had to turn back around and go back to take pictures. I think this is fascinating. Just watching  the food chain working, it's amazing. I know some people might think this is gross and they don't want to see it. But this is life. And death. And the way things are supposed to happen. And vultures are about the best clean-up crew around. If we didn't have these huge birds, there would be nasty, stinky corpses all over the roads. It would take weeks for the flesh and skin to rot. But these birds, they come in and in just a few days, it's like it never happened.

                                             I got closer and closer. They started walking away.

                                   Then they started opening those huge wings and flying away...

     

to this tree. Can you see them all? They are just amazing creatures. Ugly as crap, but amazing creatures.

On the way back home, the vultures were nowhere to be seen. The deer was half eaten. It was hot. So maybe they were taking an afternoon siesta. Waiting for dinner later.

Another one?

I just called Susan, who I got the 2 Alpacas from. I was wondering if they should still be making the pitiful whining noises. And it looks like they are always looking around for the rest of their herd. So she's going to talk to the people who are supposed to get the others and see if I can have one more. If they need to have a bigger herd to be happy, I can handle one more. She's going to be talking to them tomorrow, so I'll know something pretty fast. I just love them and want them to be happy and content here. And safe. And if they feel safer with more, than more they shall have!