First check exactly how your show wants the fleeces to be presented eg in a bin liner (aagh!), rolled with a rope of neck wool or not. See if you can find out who's judging - if it's a Wool Board person then they will want it slightly differently done compared with a craft worker.
Firstly, your fleece needs to be representative of the breed, so check your breed standard for wool info.
Choose your fleece for showing carefully. You know how you would assess a fleece before deciding whether or not to spin it - similar criteria hold for showing. Check VM, staple strength and length, no cotting, even colour, even crimp throughout, no double cuts, no contamination with markers or polypropylene twine. If there is a lot of VM then choose a different fleece. I once spent 4 hours picking over a fleece for showing - not worth it (although it did get a second at the Royal Highland Show
)
Spread the fleece on a board, tips side up. Skirt the fleece thoroughly - don't leave any belly wool (well, I don't), if the britch wool is coarse, then be generous with removing the worse bits. If there is some matting around the neck, or severe contamination with hay and feed, you can remove that wool, but if it extends a long way then use a different fleece.
Try and get the fleece as rectangular as possible, by removing some of the britch as above - this makes it easier to roll neatly.
When you roll the fleece, take your time and take care. Fold the sides in neatly, with no gaps in the fleece, or the next layer will poke through. I don't roll my fleeces as tightly as the Wool Board wants, but then their intention is to squash as many fleeces as possible into a sheet. Your intention is to show the qualities of your fleece to its best advantage. So don't roll it too tightly, but make sure the edges are rolled to the same degree as the middle, so you avoid the tombola effect. If you were selling to a handspinner, you would roll it fairly loosely, but for showing it needs to be tight enough not to fall to bits when it's taken out of the sack for display, so you want a happy medium.
If the show has said not to wrap the fleece with a neck wool rope, then just keep rolling to the end and it will all stick to itself.
If it has to be in a bin bag, don't leave it in there for long.
Most shows want the fleece labelled twice - one label on the outside of the sack, and one poped inside with the fleece itself.
When's the show Sally? Good luck with it and of course tell us all about it - with pics
Topic: How to present a fleece at a show (Read 8358 times)
