Cold this morning

This morning we are having the first heavy frost of the season. I called Scott who left home this morning at 5.30am to go to a State Emergency Service training day a couple of hours south of our place, and he said it is minus eight there. Outside it is only zero here and most of the frost has melted around the house because it is lovely and sunny, but the water from the main tank is not working so that means it is either frozen in the pipes (which happens all the time) or a fitting has blown somewhere (which unfortunately also happens more than we would like it to). For now all I am doing is turning off the pump and waiting to see if it thaws out. Living in the country does have a few disadvantages.

I finally received my drum carder! That is a machine that you use to turn fleece from messy and knotty into nice smooth usable batts or roving. I am loving it! I have a few bags of wool from my sheep to process and a fleece from a spotty merino a friend gave me. It all has to be washed though which is a long and messy process and since I do it in my bathtub it means my bathroom smells like wet sheep.

This is wool from my sheep which I blended with some coloured curly locks from a different kind of sheep.

You can see the difference in texture between the natural wool which is my sheep and the dyed locks from the curly wooled sheep. The wool from my sheep isn't very good quality because they are a cross breed of sheep bred for meat. I adopted them as lambs when they were a day old. I think they were going to be culled because it was during the drought and there wasn't enough feed for them.

This is the same blend in green after it comes off the drum. I love the curliness.

The wool from my sheep is course and not really suitable for clothing, but it will be great for art, home wares and bags. It is also really easy to spin. I have found that the better the quality the fibre is, the harder it is to spin. So far I have carded up a bunch or roving in natural and these two blends.

This post reminded me I had a dream about my ram Sneazy last night. He is very happy at the moment because he is out of his small paddock and in with the other sheep making babies which will be born in the spring.