Vauxhall city farm

We took an excursion to the Vauxhall City Farm Sheep & Wool day today, organised by the local spinning group. Turns out the farm actually only has one sheep, but had borrowed a couple more from another farm. The highlight was the shearing of Lamby, a black Wensleydale with an impressive fleece, by Tommy, who kept up an informative commentary as he sheared. Lamby had never been shorn before and was literally rigid with fear and struggling mightily, so it was a painstaking process.

Manoeuvring her into position

Starting with the stomach

Shaving those sideburns


Nearly finished

All done!

The crimp and lustre of the fleece are lovely. The spinners will make the most of the fleece, and have already started carefully combing the locks. Lamby gets to keep the topknot.

There were spinning and drop spindle demos, a chance to dip in the indigo dye pot, and goods and handspun for sale. I couldn't resist a beautiful handspun mini shawl, and some hand dyed amazingly soft alpaca yarn.

I particularly liked the hand dyed and in some cases hand spun felted bags. They were made up of lots of short lengths of different colours, which blended beautifully and made a feature of the knots.