Sheep of the Week: East Friesian

Guess who got a package this week.

Yep. That would be me!

And in that package was a nice little Friesian fleece from Gretchen, of Gretchen’s Wool Mill. Yea!

Friesians are the Cadillac of milk sheep, and are also known for their prolificacy . You can read about more about them here.

I’d never worked with Friesian wool before,, so was mighty anxious to give it a spin (so to speak).

So, here is my experience so far-

The wool in it’s raw state:

It ranges from about 3-4 inches in length. (Gretchen told me it’s usually a bit longer, but they sheared early this year.) Isn’t very greasy, and has a nice bit of crimp. This one is nice and clean,  with no veg to speak of.

Here it is after a bit of a wash-

Bright white, and now you can see the luster. It “floofed” out quite a bit in the wash, but the tips remained intact, so it was fairly easy to sort it back out into locks and ditch any short bits.

Flick carded, spun, plied-

And swatched-

It’s a nice strong, sweater wool of medium fineness, I would say.  Has a nice bounce and body to it, and is lustrous, but not silky.

A very satisfying new wool experience.  Should be fun to play with.

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Ps: And on a completely unrelated note, I wanted to share with any of you who have dogs, and who might ever have a need to use one of those horrible elizabethan collars for a post-surgical recuperation that THERE IS INDEED A BETTER OPTION.

Here is my poor sweet Bruno, stressed out and driving us all nuts with his icky plastic cone headgear:

And here is the same boy, content and relaxed in an inflatable ProCollar:

Ahh. That’s better!

Denise out.