Woolens!

This morning that Spouse o' Mine and I headed to Lawrence, home of grad student daughter Gillian, and also home of the store which holds his Christmas present: new guitar. So while he went and sat in a tiny practice room playing riffs and tunes, Gillian and I hit the Yarn Barn and the quilt store next door.

The Yarn Barn: so many skeins of so many types of yarn! I am only an occasional knitter of basic projects, although I appreciate the craft and talent that goes into it. In addition to the skeins of yarn, this place also held wools and looms and spinning wheels and all these fun projects sitting out for all to peruse and appreciate. I loved sticking my hand down into the silk and alpaca - like feathers! The colors and texture of all the wool and yarns were amazing.


On the drive home, I was describing to that Spouse o' Mine what I had seen. This brought a discussion - nay, a recollection, from him of the woolsheds back in his motherland Australia. And THEN a discussion about wool and sheep and everything else inbetween. It was an interesting conversation to take us the hour back home.

This is a sheep, half-way sheared. A ewe can produce ~ 15 pounds of wool when sheared, and a ram, (merino) ~ 39 pounds. That's a lot of wool, and lanolin, and dirt mixed in!

Once home and settled in for a cup of tea, I turned on the Science Channel on TV, and what do you know? A 30-minute spiel about wool, from the flock to the rug! I loved that I could watch it only a few hours from our visit to the Yarn Barn. So I got to watch sheep shearing (which I have seen in person, at the Jondarian Woolshed in Queensland, Australia), washing, carding, dying, spinning, spinning again, and eventually, weaving into massive wool carpet.

Sheep shearing

Dyed yarns

Wool spinners

Looms

A finished product: wool carpeting

A fun day was had...
by me!