Monday 17 October 2011

A present from Wales

My parents have been off frolicking on two weeks of holiday (well deserved, I might add), where they visited various bits of Northern Ireland, came back for 12 hours and dirtied enough pots to fill the dishwasher, then scampered off to Wales. As per instructions to bring me back some wool for spinning, they brought me back this:





Woo, semi-damp, dirty, fresh from the field wool! I think it's about 50 grams, but I daren't put it near the kitchen scales because it's pretty gross. My dad presented it to me in a bread bag:




Honest to god, if you put this next to someone's face and squeezed the air at them, you could probably knock them out, Batman villain style (screw that pussy Catwoman, I shall be... The Shepardess!). Yes, it smells that bad.


So order of business- pick out large lumps of foreign matter, wash it, leave it out to dry, learn how to card using items I already own, dye, spin, enjoy. Hopefully.


Knowing me I'll forget all about it until one day I dare to question where the weird smell in the downstairs bathroom is coming from.

2 comments:

  1. Very cool.

    I had the opportunity to raise chickens (in the city) a few years ago and it was amazing to get something directly from the source. People often forget that our food, yarn, etc. come from somewhere other than just a package at the store.

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  2. I raised chickens when I lived in Hawai'i for a bit (uh... it's a bit of a story, so I won't tell it now). They're great fun to watch, but eww their poop is impossible to get off clothes and it smells so bad.

    We have space for chickens in our back garden, and my mum wants them but is worried about the responsibility (because she gets dumped with everything in the house). We also have a large urban fox population around here so I'd worry about them. Oh, and we don't eat that many eggs!

    I also raised and slaughtered my own pig once. That was a bit traumatic, not because "omg not she's so cute" but because she didn't get killed in a calm way and because she didn't even taste that good. I would do it all over again, but I think I'd hire a butcher to come out and kill the animals, so it gets done in a more humane way.

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