The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: trish.farm on May 13, 2014, 11:03:27 am
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I have bags and bags of coradale and romney fleeces stored away and would love to sell it to hand spinners. Have googled locally in Hampshire in nothing comes up. Wheres the best place on here to get myself noticed, or any other suggestions would be appreciated. thanks :innocent:
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I found a spinner shop, walked in and told them that they would love to buy my fleece off me and gave them all of the reasons why :)
Received a nice pay check last week after dropping a load of fleeces down there :)
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Trish,
I'm not sure where abouts in Hampshire you are but google Ewe Too spinners.
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Have a look to see if there's a spinning guild local to you. That's where I offered mine to. Having said that, I offered it for free, just so it didn't go to waste (only had 4 fleeces), in a raw state, and someone contacted me asking if I'd skirt it and wash it, and then deliver!! Cheeky mare. Needless to say, I didn't!
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http://ewe2club.co.uk/ (http://ewe2club.co.uk/)
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ooh er!! contact the guild for spinners bunch in Hampshire, they are meeting this weekend in my next door village and have invited me along with samples. :excited:
One of the members has just contacted me to ask how many fleeces i have and how much per fleece!!!
Any idea of sensible price for a romney fleece?? obviously not looking to get loads of money but would like to move them on!!
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Be sure they're good quality and price them accordingly. Some sellers sell by weight but you get mired in legal requirements then, so I sell by the fleece. I hate it when folk give away good fleece - spinners should have more pride in their work than to take somebody's chuck-out stuff, and sellers should have pride in their product and charge accordingly.
However, as you are sounding out the market at this stage, I would suggest you pitch your price lower than you will next year, just to get a bite. So somewhere between £8 and £10 this time around. Watch carefully how they react when they open a bag, and if it's badly, then lower your price slightly (don't say anything in advance) but if they coo and ooh over it then put it up a bit.
A well-known seller I know gave me the advice when I was starting out 'set a price in your mind and double it' :roflanim: As his starting prices are high anyway (the fleeces are wondrous) , only the real devotees of spinning will go for those prices, but he does adjust up or down according to the customers. I've never dared to do the 'double it' thing :D
It will also be a good opportunity to learn just what spinners are looking for in a fleece, so note which are the good and bad points they see. Let people tip the fleece out on a clean table or the floor (I sometimes take a small tarp along with me) so they can see the whole thing. Don't keep rerolling it though - once open keep it open until someone buys it or you take it home.
I'm very envious of Corriedale and Romney fleeces. I would love to try some but at the moment I have way too huge a stash to justify more....... :( :spin: Although my youngest son lives in Hampshire and does get up here sometimes :thinking:
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I bought a romeny fleece last year for £8. I am currently carding and spinning. There is a lot of it so still have a way to go but its very nice.
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Do yiu have to sell in whole fleece, I've got slats shetlands castlemilks x's of all those as well so all bar 3 shed in bits so I peel loose bits off them would anyone still want to buy it?
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Trish, I took mine to a guild sale last year. The buyers were very canny ;) and it was a bunfight at the opening :o .
The guild insisted everything was priced, in a bag and labelled with owners name and type/weight of fleece, and then took 10%. Hopefully you may get away with something less formal. I used the inner liners from paper feed sacks and stapled a businesss card to the outside.
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Sarah, most spinners would want a whole fleece. You can card and spin from bits of course but a good spinner (thats not me) would want to see the whole fleece and be choosy when they spin, picking the fleece from the parts they know produce the softest fleece.
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Great thread!
I was wondering what to do with my Soay fleeces... going through my first shedding season just now and have been trying to roo/collect as much as possible but obviously it comes in bits.
Is that of any use of at all to hand spinners?
Or what do other people do with their Soay fleeces?
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beginning to wonder what i have let myself in for!!! :o
Have replied to lady who was asking price and said she needs to look at them first!! :innocent:
Wish me luck for saturday when i meet the guild members!!!!!
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The best of luck and do report back :thumbsup: Great thread and expertise shared as ever.
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I will know some of the folks you'll meet on Saturday, through Ravelry mainly, and I can assure you that if you are helpful and clearly wanting to learn how to present what spinners want to buy, you will be welcomed with open arms and given any amount of help and advice :)
It would be a good plan, if you haven't already, to read up the excellent leaflets Sarah Wroot wrote; you can download them from the Yarnmaker website here (http://www.yarnmaker.co.uk/fleece.html)
I have some Romney fleece, and although it's not the softest of the longwools that I have got, it just makes you want to spin it. So open it out as Fleecewife suggests, and let people handle it ;)
I would climb over people to get some Corriedale fleece to try... I think I may PM one of the Hampshire Ravellers; if she's coming to Woolfest again this year she can buy one of your Corriedale fleeces for me and bring it up at the end of June! :D
Be prepared that not all of your fleece will be appealing to handspinners, even though they are good breeds and should be. There having been no attention paid to fleece for some time, due to its being sold very cheaply, there is now a lot of variation even in breeds that are supposed to have good fleeces for spinning. And other factors affect the fleeces too; the weather, the health of the sheep, the workload (she may have had triplets, in which case she won't have put as much into her fleece as an untapped hogg), how it was clipped, how it was wrapped, how it was stored...
:fc: some or even all of your fleece will be nice and you will learn a lot and make some friends - and hopefully start to build a customer base for the future.
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Great thread!
I was wondering what to do with my Soay fleeces... going through my first shedding season just now and have been trying to roo/collect as much as possible but obviously it comes in bits.
Is that of any use of at all to hand spinners?
Or what do other people do with their Soay fleeces?
A couple of points about Soay fleece: they are tiny; and a whole lot of each fleece is horrible :roflanim:
The nice bit (which spins up beautifully soft and plush) comes from the shoulders, flanks towards the front, and possibly round the neck although they've usually caught every bit of seed, hay, sticky willy seeds and so on in it so it's unspinnable. Britch wool on Soays is frequently very coarse and hairy, although there are exceptions.
I have had a few Soay fleeces shorn by Mr Fleecewife, and a couple of them have been lovely, with not too much hair and of a reasonable staple length. It seems very funny to roll a Soay fleece. The hair stays in when shorn, but is left behind when roo'ing.
More usually I roo them, and discard the horrible bits as I go along. I then put all I get into one bag and sell it as mixed.
The way I roo though, where I'm being very careful, is not to peel bits off, but to pull individual staples. I take a firm grip of the staple tip, brace my other hand against the skin, then pull and wriggle until the staple comes away. This is much easier on a Shetland, as Soay fleece can be very sticky, but if you can do it, it makes a well presented, almost ready to spin, product. By discarding anything which is second rate as you go (have 2 piles, one keepsie and the other trash) you don't need to sort it later.
To roo this way, you must have a fair amount of new growth so the rise is clearly defined and 1/2" - 1" above the skin - this makes it easier to separate the two layers.
Always roo on a warm or hot day so the lanolin is soft.
You may well find that the front end of the sheep is ready to roo before the britch. It's best to take it when it's ready, and leave your sheep with fluffy pantaloons for a couple of weeks ;D
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oh my, I am really nervous now!! Dont think i have wrapped and packed and done what I should have done with my fleeces!! Think my ladies on saturday will have some strong words for me!! oh well, all a sharp learning curve!!!
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Thank you FW for you ever so detailed information!
My two males have shed their fleeces so far, the girls are still hanging on to theirs (and to their lambs, looking very heavy now!)
Being a clueless beginner I have just been pulling it off indiscriminately so I guess I have to start another thread about how to use up 'trash' fleece.
I'll try to be more careful when I do the girls.
I think I know what you mean with pulling a 'whole staple' but if you had a photo of a wool 'staple' by any chance I'll be more sure about what I'm looking for.
Thank you all again for your wisdom and experience!
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Here are two pics of mine, showing the staples in the clipped fleece, and the staple spread out.
This Cap'n's fleece, he was a Shetland x (Charollais x (Beltex x (Blue-faced Leicester x Swale.)))
Your Soay fleece will be considerably shorter staple.
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In laymans terms I guess you could say that a stable is like a lock of hair.
Ladyk, you could probably use the pieces you have for a peg loom rug. Its very easy to do and the fleece doesn't require the same amount of prep that you would do for spinning.
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Umm.. not sure about using fleece with 1/2" staple for peg looming without spinning? But would be very interested to know how!
Semi-cotted Heb, I can see I can tear off strips of fleece, roughly twist in my fingers, and weave away. But the very short Soay-type (to which my first year's Castlemilk Moorit fleeces are very similar ::))... ???
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Umm.. not sure about using fleece with 1/2" staple for peg looming without spinning? But would be very interested to know how!
Semi-cotted Heb, I can see I can tear off strips of fleece, roughly twist in my fingers, and weave away. But the very short Soay-type (to which my first year's Castlemilk Moorit fleeces are very similar ::) )... ???
Sorry, didn't realise it had such a short staple. Yes would definitely be a problem for a peg loom. Stuffing something maybe?
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Thanks for posting the staple pics for me Sally. I still haven't quite learnt how to post pics ::)
If you're lucky you will get a Soay fleece which is longer than 1", maybe 2", but yes, they aren't everyone's cup of tea. What can help with spinning a Soay fleece is all that grease which holds them together, but at the same time makes drawing out the fibre more difficult. Basically, not a beginner's fleece.
LadyK - another possibility if my method of rooing by individual staples doesn't work for you, is to roo by unpeeling bits, but maintaining the lock structure (so not just pulling by the handful which does destroy the structure, but use two hands to roll off the fleece). Then when you have all your surviving good quality bits, separate it out into staples/locks, and sell it as 'mixed roo'ed staples'. That's a whole lot of bother though, especially if it's for someone else, and will only make about £1 of difference to price - hardly worth it.