Bird's nests, of course!

The question was what to do with the "bad" wool - the tangled, the parts with lots of V(egetable)M(atter), the short bits... The answer: bird's nests, of course!

I tried various ways of making them in an efficient way. The best(?) turned out to be: wrap some dry wool around a small ball, well above the equator. Take one plastic shopping bag, previously twisted into a sort-of-spheric shape. Transfer the bag into the "nest", put the whole thing into an old panty-hose. Tie with a string.
I got 10 "nests" into one pair of pantyhose. Put it in the washing machine. Out of the 10 I got 8 passable:

It can even be said that the VM adds to the appearance! (IMO, of course ;-)
Now, it I only could find out a faster way to make the eggs...

Ungrateful!

I can't really blame the sheep for wanting to get out. It really is a lot greener on the outside (but all that is green is not grass, what should be "lawn" is mostly moss).
This is what I saw from the upstairs window a couple of hours ago:

They (actually, just this individual) kept escaping last week, so on the Saturday we spent hours fixing a better (bigger) pasture. There's not much grass there, either, but it certainly looks greener. See the line between the winter paddock and the "pasture"?

But... the ungrateful creature decided "lawn" was better, after two days on the greenish pasture. I could not understand how she had got out - the fence is well over a metre. But I was lucky: she wanted in again. Tried the gate first (maybe it would magically open?), gave up that and went to a special part of the fence, flattened herself completely and wriggled under. (I had never imagined a sheep could get that flat!)

... so I found some pieces of reinforcement bars (is what the dicitonary calls it?) and made some oversized staples. They "only" go 20 cm into the earth, but maybe they will hold a couple of days, at least.

Life is never dull with livestock (or perhaps I should call them "woolstock"?)!

Pigs?

Sunday was shearing day.

Before and after:

(those pink things can't really be sheep, can they?)

The shearer had a special table, to have a better position when working.

One-by-one there emerged some small, pinkish animals - pigs, perhaps? When the first was "done" and released, the others almost did not recognize their comrade, and there was a lot of running and head-butting.

Obviously they liked to be naked. The immediately tried to escape (and succeded).
Stupidly, we had left the plastic easy-to-move fence over winter, and it did not survive the heavy snow. We did make a smallish paddock with electrified wire, which worked fine as long as they were all woolly. Naked, they could crawl under... the bottom wire was a bit high, now the snow has melted.
When we had fixed the "winter" fence, they accepted to stay inside. Until... one managed to climb the stone wall (something they never even contemplated when woolly). She told the others, of course, and it took me a couple of hours to put up another piece of temporary fence.

The whites all are crossbred - we were told they were mostly Finn, but crossed with Texel (and possibly Shropshire). To keep track of what the wool looked like, and which fleece belonged to which sheep, I took a lock from each, fingerspun a short piece and labeled the sample. It appeares that out of four sheep, I have three different wool types.

(The two brown are Finn, and their fleeces are quite alike. And looks like typical Finn wool :-)

But, before I can do anything more, I have lots of wool to wash...

Portrait of a Lady

or, more accurately, of six ladies.

Since about a week, our household has four new members:

I also managed to get some better portraits of the two older ladies:

The two brown are, we were told, purebred Finn, while the white ladies are Finn x Texel in varying proportions. (Or, possibly Finn x Shropshire x Texel - obviously you have to be a spinner to take notice of sheep breeds...)
I have yet to see the x wool sans sheep, but they seem to have a slightly more defined lock formation.
I wrote about sampling the Finn wool here. Fortunately (or do I mean UN- ?) it will be another half-year until I have any white x wool to sample...

1:st homegrown yarn!

Finally, I managed to sort my first homegrown fleeces. They were shorn months ago, but temperature and weather were against my doing it earlier.
First, perhaps, a portrait of the "donors" - they are two old Finn ladies. They aren't interested in getting their picture taken, but here's one and part of the other:


It will be some time until I get the fleece washed, but I wanted to spin a couple of small samples all the same.
This is the first - carded and "spindled":




After plying and washing it looks like this:


This small sample is approximately 10 wraps per centimeter. It came out nice and lofty with lots of elasticity.

Next sample will be combed, I think.