| A BALE OF FIBER Sadly this sale has ended. The white and the Gray are gone!! Thanks to you who bought this fiber. The Gray was actually a filmy roving and not in batt form. It was just very compressed. The white was almost all roving, but has been baled for several years. No damage, just compression that will expand since it has been released. A person might just think a bit before deciding to purchase a 600 lb. bale of fiber, but a person just might be wrong too. These same persons are crazy enough to buy two more big bales! Harlan Brown of Brown Sheep met me at the door awhile back asking if I would like a bale of some really beautiful natural gray blend wool. Silly question.......of course I would, but I need to make room for it..........somewhere. The storage building is nearly full to bursting, the garage is doubling as a shipping and storage area until the new shipping area gets closed in. But one can always make more room for fiber can't one??? But we had made room for two more big bales.........White Roving and fibers this time!! And now they are gone!!! I'm not sure who is the most dangerous in the Brown Sheep Mill.........the enabler's who show us the fibers, Carl who loves them all, or me, Carol who also loves them all. All I know for sure is that we end up with truck or van or trailer full of fibers every time we head for the mill. And we go back for more Frequently!!! And we love every minute of it. When someone jokingly says they have a "Ton of Fiber" on hand, we just laugh, I think we have at least four tons in the shed. At any given time anymore we have several tons of fiber on hand ready to be shipped out across the country and around the world. This gray bale was made up of colored natural wools, much from the four state area of Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. It had been washed and carded and then compressed into a huge bale. The correct term for this fiber was "Laps" as it was a very wide, thin "roving". As we cut the bands the fibers began to expand again as wool will do. I could only hope it will still be in the garage come morning. This was excellent spinning wool, excellent dyeing wool, and perfect felting wool. It was ready for whatever you might like to use it for. |
| The bale slid out of the truck with the might of two men, and they pushed it into place in the garage. Doesn't look to bad. |
| The first thing to do is get these steel bands cut off. |
| The bands are loose and the fiber is starting to come out of the burlap and plastic. |
| Oh! Oh! Might be we should have opened it with the bale turned the other way! |
| Holy Cow!..........or should it be Holy Sheep!! This stuff just keeps on expanding. |
| And expanding across the floor |
| We are finally able to pull a length wise piece about a foot thick and put it atop the huge carded fiber. Knotting the plastic bag to contain it somewhat. This stuff was ready to sell. |
| THE WHITE BALE! This fiber was in roving form, just compressed. Clean and carded into rovings. Some in loose carded handfuls. Some is 100% wool, some wool blends. ..mohair, silk, etc. |
| There was right close to 600 lb. of white rovings and fibers in this bale. Carl cut the wires and it began expanding across the floor once again. There was a lot of good spinning and dyeing in these fibers. |
| Carol props up the second big white bale. We finally have the warehouse free of the stored fibers. |