A wet-felted fleece

[Pandagirl]

So cute! Congratulations! Enjoy,

[luvswool and dyestuff]

Zara, the lambs are so adorable, so precious…very sweet photos, thanks! New life is a sign of Spring.

[Shepherdess]

Lovely lambs, congratulations. I have a shearing question for you. We usually shear with them sitting on they bum. using the stand how do you keep the fleece in one piece. do you shear from the bottom up or from head to tail? I am getting to old to bend over and shear sheep that weigh as much as I do.

[zed]

Aaw, too cute!

[zara]

Ann,

The neck is sheared first, then one line along the back and after that one side at a time. So you don't get the fleece in one piece, but the two sides hold together quite well as two larger pieces. It is also easy to raise the stand so that you get the sheep up to a "back saving height" to shear the belly and legs. 

I found some intructions (in Swedish, but lots of photos) here: 
www.lansstyrelsen.se/JAMTLAND/SiteCollectionDocuments/Sv/lantbruk-och-landsbygd/lantbruk/Rikare-odlingslandskap/materialobroshyrer/steg-for-steg/farklippning-i-klippstol.pdf 

[zara]

And here are some photos from when we sheared our ram.

[Shepherdess]

thanks Zara I will have a look and show my husband who is also not looking forward to bending over.

[Pandagirl]

Cool. Ive never seen that done. He looks kind of relieved at the end.

[zara]

He waged his tail through the whole ordeal and seemed quite relieved to be rid of his winter coat. Although, he did look like a little skinny goat afterwards. This is the most common way of shearing sheep in Sweden. You could probably build a similar stand in wood, with a ramp leading up. I have seen goat-milking stands built like that.

[Shepherdess]

I have a stand, very much like the one you have. The head piece is a little different. I think I will pad the metal a bit before I use it.

[carole aka craftywoman]

the fleece looks amazing, was it difficult to felt through the layers, it looks so thick, and the shearing, well that looks like a work of art in itself :-)

[zara]

Carole - you only need to felt the cut ends into a layer of carded wool on the surface (of the cut ends), leaving most of the length of the wool in the fleece unfelted.

As for the shearing, we hired a professional sheep-shearer and she really did a good job. I'm not yet brave enough to try it myself. ;-)

[zara]

One of my cats followed me into the green-house and discovered the bench with the fleece. She very much approved of it. :-)