Fantasia Yarn - Jen

I just finished spinning up Fantasia's fleece. She is a 2007 ewe we got from Maureen Koch, and we love her on so many levels. She has a very friendly disposition, a very good advocate for the breed. When people say, "Shetlands are so wild, aren't they?", we introduce them to our Fantasia. She is flashy - Yuglet Sokket Katmoget - she really stands out on the pasture.

She throws really nice lambs, who have inherited her disposition.

Her fleece is very dense, and is a very pretty grey, covers entire spectrum from very light grey to charcoal. It spins up well and is nice and soft.

Usually I sort out the fleeces that I deem acceptable for sale raw based on how they sheared, cleanliness, etc. Fantasia was first in line for shearing this year and the outcome was a disaster. Second cuts like crazy, spots where she got her foot caught in it and just shredded it, etc. So I decided that I would spare my customers the heartbreak of going through and pulling out beautifuls sections of fiber that were cleanly sliced in half with a shearing blade...(its really sickening, isn't it?). I decided against selling it as batting from my drum carder also because her staple length is a little on the short side, and I guess I was concerned that a spinner would be unhappy trying to spin it when they are used to our other shetlands that have longer fleeces. I could be way off base here, but I am really sensitive when it comes to customer satisfaction.


So I spun it up and here is the result. I sold one skein b4 Christmas to a friend who was going to knit her daughter a hat. So now I have 4 skeins in my shop, a total of 576 yards, 12 oz of yarn. And about 2 paper bags of scrap fiber that will make a nice base for a needlefelting project when I get around to it.