We're having an unusually warm winter here in Meadows of Dan. Two light snows and a short cold snap have been the extent of it so far. Today it's foggy with a little rain, more like March than January. I keep thinking the weather will get bad and I will have to stay in and spin! I did get back to the wheel last evening and finished spinning up a bobbin of East Friesian wool.
Yes, this is from a sheep. Apparently this breed, the East Friesian, is a relatively recent import to America from Europe and is used as a dairy sheep as well as a meat breed. According to the online resources I checked the wool is considered coarse, but the wool I've been spinning, from a local farmer, is pretty nice. Not extremely soft but certainly not unpleasant. Would be great for hats and mittens. This wool was clean but there are some short cuts in it. I'm going to recommend that they fuss at their shearer and make sure their fleece skirters shake out the fleeces to get the second cuts out.
Things are moving right along at the shop, thanks to the help of a lot of people. My stepdad Wendell put up my larger mailbox so I can keep mailing eBay purchases out and maybe receive some yarn and knitting needles from here and there. Linda and Mary have been coming and helping organize and Stella, Beth and Kathleen have visited and cheered us on. Peter and Kathleen did the huge bulk of the work in moving over all the displays and a lot of the remaining yarn and fiber stock. It has been a wonderful community effort and I'm grateful. Right now I'm pricing books from storage and getting them onto the shelves in the book rooms. An April opening date is certainly looking possible right now.
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