When my shearer Liz told me of a woman she knew who was spinning with raw wool and said the smell was so bad it made her sick, I was at first confused. It never occurred to me that someone wouldn’t like the smell of raw wool.
I’m happily smelling it right now and feeling how silky the lanolin from my wool has made the skin on my usually dry hands. At the moment, my whole studio is infused with the smell of raw wool because I spent the morning skirting the wool (picking out the organic debris)that Liz sheared from my sheep last Friday.
I put about 2 lbs of Rosemary’s wool in a separate bag for Suzy who wants to add it to her mohair goats wool (we did a trade, wool for one of her scarves) and the rest of it will go to the Vermont Fiber Mill on Sunday.
I still have to figure out exactly what I’ll be doing with it all. I know for sure that I’ll be keeping Issachars black wool natural and making it into yarn. And I have preorders for the same blue that I had last time so I’ll be dying some that same color.
Because I didn’t shear two of my sheep, Suzy and Biddy, I’ll have less yarn, but I’ll make up for that next fall after I get my three new Romneys.
Josie just sent me a picture of the house socks she made using my blue wool. “They are nice and soft! Your wool is wonderful to knit with!” She wrote me.
I love seeing what my wool turns into. So if anyone out there has photos they’d like to share, I’d love to post them on my blog.
Maria, . . .would Josie share her pattern for house socks ? I envy the wool users because wool is easier on hands than what feel like steel shards of acrylic yarn! But allergies don’t ask what one prefers. The shapes of Josie’s socks look comfortable! Some streaks of latex paint on the bottoms makes them safe for slippery or carpeted floors. Veronica
I’ll ask her Veronica, if she doesn’t see this before I have the chance to. They do look really warm and comfortable.