Handworks Crochet and then Some!

2017 has been a wonderfully blessed year here. My husband fully got the Meishan registry off the ground and the Livestock conservancy was at our farm to look at them!! He was in Out Here magazine with them! And will be in the spring issue of Country side magazine also !  We got horses and started riding together for some much needed farm fun. I did a national seminar on milking donkeys! I found a sheep breed who's fleece I love and can also be milked that does well on my hilly rough lands! Score! All that is so wonderful!! But I had personal goals this year ! That was to get better at my favorite ever fiber art... Crochet!! When I really get my mind on accomplishing something I give it 100%. And well, expanding my crochet skills has been a lot more fun than my last 2 major goals.. which 7 years ago was to grow all our own food ( except coffee, chocolate and salt) mission accomplished!  I'm not kidding And I hope I never have to do it again!! absolutely the hardest most stressf...

Buying a whole fleece to process is huge! Even just an average 5 pounds of fleece can yield a lot of yarn! And because you hold the key to how and what it's processed into you can get many different yarns and projects from that one fleece. I would have never bought a whole fleece as a beginner. It's just to much!  But I bought sheep ... so there I was with a couple of whole fleeces!  My first fleece came from a dairy sheep I called Bo Peep. This was in 2013. She was a great milking sheep with an average mid grade type white fleece. And it, like my other dairy sheep fleece did not felt. Made it very unintimidating to wash as I had been told horror stories of washing wool wrong or to rough and ending up with a big felted ball of ruined wool! Low in lanolin and not being super fine it was an easy fleece to clean. Crimpy and strong , average length also made it a perfect for a beginner spinner like me!  It carded super easy too!  I hit the ground spinning with that fleec...