In the Raw

My Balwen fleece arrived yesterday, so today (half-day at work) I spread it out on the lawn and gave it the once-over. I skirted it a bit more, and now my garden is sprouting gobs of black-brown fleece. (it's good fertiliser!)

The colour is lovely, a deep brownish black with sun-bleached tips, but it has a bad case of dandruff. Scurf, to be accurate. About half the fleece is quite bad, the other much less so. It is particularly noticeable on such a dark fleece, and also probably made worse by Balwen being a particularly dense fleece. Now some folks will have you believe that scurf is terminal, and you should scrap the fleece. I don't think so. All you need is a dog slicker brush, preferably retractable, but mine are standard and work fine (also make great hand carders) and a bunch of time. Grab a lock and brush it out towards the butt end, flip it over, brush it out again then turn it the other way round and flick out the tips. You'll get a lot of short waste, and in that is most of the scurf. Chuck the waste on the compost, and spin up the lock. Ta-dah!



Inspired, I dragged a chunk of the Texel and started spinning that in the raw. It's turning out a treat. No pictures yet though :-)

Still ploughing on with plying the blended merino, and spinning the ArtemisArtemis batt. I'm now debating what to ply the batt with - either itself, or do I try and card something complementary as a second ply? Hmmmm...

~*~