Caora Dubh (Black Sheep) Update #1

"Oh," Lindsay said, "I see you've dragged out your pet sheep again."  Yes. Yes I have.  But look at her!  

Notice anything different?  In the upper left corner of this shot, you can tell:  Some of her is missing.  By which you can tell I am making progress in processing and spinning the wee beastie.  That missing area amounts to just about 1 full bobbin of worsted-spun laceweight singles.  I'm shooting for 5-ply, so there's a whole lotta spinning still to do.  And, by the looks of it, a whole lotta washing, too. 

Here's what I do:  Pull off individual locks from the fleece.  I take about 40 locks, and keeping them intact, place them in these little mesh zipper bags.  These are actually packing cubes that I bought for a trip abroad once.  Each holds just the right number of locks for me to scour, comb and spin at a sitting.  It takes me about an hour and a half to do a bag, and 8 bags = 1 bobbin.  

Here's what the locks look like after washing, but before combing:

So now if you are wondering what ever happend to my big fat plan for spinning a whole fleece, you have the answer.  I'm eating an iceberg, one snow cone at at time.

Next time: Singles!