#sheep breed

[ezekiellsplayground]

Wool washing day was a whole afternoon affair. This is my 700 grams of merino suffolk cross from Scotts Creek Farm in NSW, Australia.

First pic is the wool in the second bath with dirt water from the initial bath in the other bucket. Next pictures are from halfway through the soap baths and the last soap bath where the water is pretty clear showing no more dirt or lanolin is being drawn from the wool.

I like to dry my locks on a herb dryer I got from amazon. Once completely dry (which took a few days in Aussie summer) I was rewarded with lovely fluffy wool, with a tight, springy crimp. Don’t worry about the dirt on the lock ends, it’s been fried from the washing and will fall right out during the next processing stage.

[randomanimaloftheday]

Day 241#: Bergamasca Sheep

Today's animal of the day is the Bergamasca breed of domestic sheep (Ovis aries)!

Photo credit: Valentina Cano

This breed originates from the mountainous Bergamo province of northern Italy. To narrow it down further, their lineage can be traced back to the Cal Brembana and Val Seriana valleys. However, the breed is now commonly kept throughout Italy, especially in the Teramo province, where more than 80% of the registered stock for this breed resides. Traditionally, this breed was kept by nomadic shepherds who would keep their herds up in the mountainous alpine pastures during the summer and then spend the winter in one of the surrounding valleys.

Photo credit: Elena Tartaglione

The standard color for this breed is white, and their wool is pretty coarse, since they're mainly bred for their meat rather than for the quality of their wool. Because they are a lop-eared breed, they have very long (and adorable) ears, and both rams and ewes lack horns since they've been polled. This is when a sheep or goat breed has been selectively bred for many years to not have horns, which reduces the chances of an aggressive sheep injuring its handlers, other sheep, or itself.

[knithacker]

Which sheep breed are you? Find out: 👉 https://buff.ly/2SLV985 ... I’m a Shetland! 🐑🐑🐑

[ezekiellsplayground]

I’ve processed enough fleece that I had ended up with a few bags of different coloured waste wool. So I picked up some felting tools, pulled out my wool ironing pad, grabbed some coloured mini floofs that came wrapped around spindles, and turned it all into dryer balls.

Unlike dryer balls made with commercial top which tend to felt relatively smooth, mine still have a slight fuzzy surface but that’s mainly because of the breeds the fibre came from. And it doesn’t matter, I’ve kept the green ones and having been using them can say the fuzz doesn’t change with use.

I have 2 sets of 3 balls - white & black (merino/leicester) and brown & black (merino/leicester/helsinge) - available for adoption in my Etsy - https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/4435287358/hand-felted-100-real-wool-unscented?ref=shop_home_active_1&frs=1&logging_key=96fa380dbde4be4379eefb43f46b6bf7f6faa7a9%3A4435287358

A set of 3 small sized hand felted dryer balls, made from real wool! These dryer balls were made using cleaned waste wool, which is a by-pro