Fleece Shearing and Skirting ~ Love Ewe Farm's Romney, Mr. Bates

so I will be sharing using the New Zealand method and as you can see they relax once you get them down [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] ah [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] he looks like a zebra any beautiful yeah the stripes are so on I've never seen that you might have seen it but I've never you don't let those knee looks trophy he's got that out the way your skin does it looks like ripples on water okay I always love that it's just the the follicle sort of go different directions Thank You bass so mr. banks is please just got sheared and it was not squirted from the ground really excessive pulling up it's a jelly roll and stuff and I will look at it [Music] general on open it up so that you put the cut side down when you're squirming at least I do you can see all the different colors in it just before I can get it all the way out you can see dark [Music] silver and dark and pewter it's quite a few collisions this is almost black falooda difference in the color between that and this which is like a pewter pewter gray color it's gorgeous nicely had enough of that I could do something with that it's not too bad there's the poo bits you always want to toss that it's not anymore trying to wash nope second skirting the fleece is definitely something that you don't rush not if you want to get the most usable bits out of that can you just start throwing and pulling into point off some of the good stuff with the bad stuff so I guess I'm doing as I'm talking over because that would be the edge around the edges down along towards the belly towards the back legs the front legs since I'm hand processing this and not sending it to a mill I might be even a little pickier just because if I don't want to wash it or think it will come out clean enough or if it's too short and it's just not worth my time of course I'm not going to waste time on something that's too difficult or time-consuming I just want the best the best of the best that's pretty that's a nice clump right there gorgeous the color is to die for a love of color and this is a Hoggett fleece meaning that he is just over a year old and it's his first shearing don't really want bits like that that are kind of a matted and really hard to pull apart they're just going to be some of the key points of a fleece if you're at a festival and you're shopping for fleas generally you don't get to see them laid out like this they don't usually have the facility or the ability to do that for every fleece or for any really usually so the fleece will be rolled up in a certain way that you end up usually seeing the cut part facing the top of the bag at least that's my experience generally when I go to festival and you see places so whatever you can reach if you can pull out a lock there are a few key things to a fleece that you do want to check for before you buy it as you're some deciding factors first of all is it strong does it have any brakes in it so you take a lock about this size really no bigger or else it has enough strength in itself that it's harder to break if there was a break in it and you just put it up next to you and just pull it about three times now that was me that was enough fleece my finger slipped so you just pull it and if it pains I don't think you can hear that but and you do it three times and it doesn't break anywhere it's a it's a sound fleece at least this lock is places have been known to have areas where the for some reason there's a break in a certain area but the general rest of the fleece will be fine but if there's any break in a fleece I would just say pass on it the one of the second one of the other things that I find really important is how clean the fleece is mud and dirt like mud mud and stuff not caked on but if you see some dirt on are easier to get out then fine chaff and dust like I don't know if you're looking at an alpaca fleece because I do like to roll in the dust it gets down in the fleece down into the it'll just get down in and if you shake it it almost looks like you've shaken powder out of a sugar shaker or something and you don't want that either it makes it hard to clean and if you're combing anything like the straw or hay like this things like this will come out that's no big deal but the really fine dusty bits of chaff they hold on to the fibers they don't wash out and they're really hard to comb out so try to avoid those as well next thing to think about is how you're going to process it are you doing it by hand are you going to send it to a mill if you're sending it to a mill you have to make sure you know the minimum requirements for staple length of that mill mills are different some will take shorter you see the difference here a small up sorry a shorter and longer so you may have to pick out the longer if you want to send it to a particular mill that has a minimum of three inches say and if you're going to do it yourself how short do you want it to get depending on whether you're carting it or combing it I'm a comer so I like it to be three or three inches is about my minimum I've done shorter but they're just that much more challenging to me actually so that's decent not long not short somewhere it's perfect that's actually a nice length I like that I don't have a ruler with me but that's at least three inches three and a half nice I've gone around this place several times now and I've picked out what I think are almost all of the stuff that I don't want that I would not put in the wash what I'm taking out our parts that I do not want to wash because if I don't want to wash it it's not you know I only wash the parts that I can call since I'm a comer I'll be combing it and look at the table look at the color difference just look at this gorgeous he's got at least three or four colors in this please I love this piece for use you oh I just thought of something else the Sun bleaching keep in mind that a police that has some bleach tips if it's long enough like this is you can snip off the tips yes you can cut your fleece the fleece is cut down here so there's no reason why you can't cut it up here generally unless it's the lamb fleece it's been cut up here already that the previous year so it's cut on both ends anyway so it doesn't harm it at all to snip the tips off if you want the true gray color you need to keep the true gray color if you include the lighter tips you will get a lighter yarn in the end and that can have really wonderful effects or effects that you really don't desire it just depends the best thing to do would be to take and make a sample do a sample yarn with and without and see which one you like the best oh I did think of something else yes dander dander is important because dander is hard to get out and dander is just what it is it's like your own dander if you have dandruff whatever it's just skin cells the skin has come off and it's usually it's usually down in here down in here closer to the skin at least the ones I've seen sometimes it can be further down if there was for some reason that the fleece that the skin cells came off I don't personally know why that happens I've honestly never done a research on why they get the dander but it does not wash out it will comb out but the best thing to do if you have a fleece with some dander in it and you don't mind because the fleece is worth it is to take and flick the ends after you've washed them flicking it beforehand I wouldn't recommend some people might say yes I personally wouldn't do that wash it and then take your ends with a little flicker flick it turn around and flick it and that should get rid of most of the dander sometimes combing will do it but flicking is usually the best way I've had fleeces with dander didn't even realize until I had a fleece when it was too late SOB learned I've learned over the years hello picking through please it's relaxing it's fun it's always educational because every single place is different done with mr. Bates's please I'll probably pick a little bit longer the next video will be washing I'll use his fleece and I will demonstrate my washing method or actually I'll try to demonstrate a couple of different ways to wash his fleece both in like this and also to keep the lock structure if you want to do that so that will be coming up next so thank you all very much for watching and I hope you learned something if you have any questions or comments leave them down below in the comment section or send me a private message thanks very much till next time bye you

Channel: TheNaturalSpinner

Views: 18,188

Rating: 4.848485 out of 5

Keywords: Romney Sheep, shearing, fleece, skirting a fleece, wool, Sheep, raw wool

Id: aar53KgF_mo

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 07 2017