Fleece, its what you need to spin!

So to go along with my new spinning wheel I want to also learn to prepare fleece.  I did some research and for American wool, there are a few breeds of sheep that are easier to spin than others.  I read about some of the breeds and decided a full blood Romney is the breed I want to try to find and spin.  I found several folks on the internet who sold Romney roving (already prepared for spinning) but I wanted to do it myself.  I have practiced some with carding with Liesl, but have not done it alone yet.  I also researched the difference between carding and combing, and based on the type of fleece I am planning on obtaining, I want to comb it.  Tool research is next.

When looking for a fleece, I ran across Skylines Farm http://www.skylinesfarm.com/ in Idaho.  They are a small run farm, and avoid chemicals in their practices.   http://www.skylinesfarm.com/managementpractices.htm Their sheep are raised specifically for spinning fleece.  They have sound fleece practices and I loved their photos and information they shared on their website.  I emailed Melissa and we had a great dialog back and forth and she answered all my questions.    I decided to start small, and the sheep Bonnie had a lovely half a fleece available - see here is a photo of it:

I will be getting 4 pounds of it, look how clean and lovely it looks! What is so cool, is I can even reserve Bonnie's or any of their other sheep wools not yet spoken for,  for next year.  That is almost like its my sheep :) Isn't that cool? 

There are several types of both natural color, and white sheep on this farm.  I wanted to start with white, mainly because I plan to try to dye it too.  BUT, they had this really lovely almost black fleece they had not sold yet.  I dont think two fleece are in my budget nor expertise, but I asked Melissa if I could maybe just have a little lock of this lamb's fleece, just to how it feels/looks compared to Bonnie and she said no problem.  See look at this, isnt the color beautiful!  Maybe next year?

What fun this adventure is going to be!