Monday, January 14, 2008

So much wool!

I finally started feeling better, after being pretty much bedridden for a few days, just in time to hang out with my friend. And she has a CAR (I don't - I walk everywhere), and she took us to a rambouillet farm that I've been trying to get to for forever. I've been pining away for some lovely raw wool to work with. And we came home with 4 gigantic bags of soft soft fleece, estimated at ten pounds each, for a price that was so amazing! It's cheap because it's last years wool and he wanted to get rid of it. I contacted him after searching for local rambouillet farms, so I don't think he was really expecting to be able to sell it since it's almost shearing time again.

fleeces

dark chocolate rambouillet ram fleece (I cannot believe how soft & fine this is):

black fleece

white ewe, this one is my favorite, super crimpy and soft:

white fleece

Yay! Look for yarns spun from this lovely local wool soon...but not that soon, because today is post office day.

*EDITED to replace with better photos! I forgot to turn off the micro last time...*

5 comments:

cosymakes said...

woot! great find! i *heart* local wool. can't wait to see what you make.

Whisp3rd said...

How do you find if you have a wool farm in your area? I searched and I came up short. I don't know if it's because I live in Texas and there are not many wool farms here or if I was just searching wrong.

folktale fibers said...

I didn't have much luck until I started trying breed-specific searches - like "rambouillet farm MD". Then I started finding listings of farms with their contact info & a description of what they breed and sell. I got lucky with this one, because it's only 15 miles from my apartment. Almost all of them don't have websites of their own, which is why it's so hard to find them online. Maybe try a phone book too? I dunno what you'd look under though... Also, if you can find websites for any local or national sheep breeders associations, sometimes they have a list of all their members.

I think there are a lot of angora goat farms in TX. I'm just guessing because I remember seeing lots of fiber stores selling "Texas mohair".

Whisp3rd said...

thanks! that helps and really makes a lot of sense.

Anonymous said...

Hey abby,

great score! Looks like you have plenty of wool to play with. don't you just love the natural black?
Can't wait to see what you create with all that poundage. If anything you will be able to reduce heating costs with all that extra insulation.

PS. I moved to LJ, since Blogger was bogging for me...here is my new blog addy. Thx

http://atomhearteve.livejournal.com