So you know about the sheep at the farm…

…well what have we been doing with the wool?

Farmer Paul shears his small flock himself, and back in May/June time he kindly gave me a load of fleeces to experiment with.

Ahem. 



After beards (obviously) the next thing we tried was felting. This was easy to do – thanks to Jess for the inspiration! Here’s a good felting tutorial. It worked great, we made a wall hanging and these cute baby slippers.


At our harvest party, Vicky of the Cambridge Sustainability Centre did a great demo on her spinning wheel, and spun some neat looking wool with party-goers.

Vicky (on the right) teaches wool spinning at out harvest party this year


Vicky lent me her spinning wheel and I’ve been doing a bit of spinning since then! Thanks so much Vicky!

I’m a complete beginner, so got a lot of spinning wheel rage at first but managed to make something half decent. 



The wool spun out quite thin, so I twisted two bobbins worth together to make a thicker plyed yarn I could knit with. 

Plyed wool on the bobbin

Here’s the first bit of wool I made on a contraption called a niddy noddy. No idea why its called that!


Then looking pretty wound up into a hank. 
First bit of plyed wool!
And to test the finished article….

Cheeky spot of crochet with the new wool