Hot Steaming Fiber

It's hot work to dye fiber now, but I have a big fan trained on me in the milk room where I do my picking and dyeing now. It's a chance for me to spend some time with the milk room kitties who help me pick the hay and "vegetable matter" out of the fleece. I can't imagine how anyone would want to work in a full scale fiber mill. It is HARD work, lots of picking, washing and rinsing. But there are mills popping up all over the place. I have a lot of respect for the work they do. Have to get some coats on the sheep. I throw hay down from the mow into a feeder and the sheep love to get under it while I am tossing. I have some incredibly beautiful wool that is choking with little bits of hay, not the big strands that I can pull out easily. Trouble with coats is that someone has to catch the sheep and hold it while the coat is fitted and strapped on. Then the wool grows and the sheep must be caught again and the coat changed. I will probably buy some more coats ($15.00 for a big sheep) and hire Randy and his cousin to do the catching. Matt is getting more and more reluctant to do the rodeo thing and I don't want him to get hurt, either. If anything happened to him I would have to get a Juan and Jose in here pretty quick. I can do everything myself except catch the sheep. I love it when a female shepherd says to me, oh, you just catch them here, or hold them by the top of the thigh (?) or do it this way. I just know there is a man involved somewhere! My sheep are big, not the biggest, and sometimes I wish I were raising Finns or Shetlands. But that Bluefaced Leicester fiber is ooooohhhhh so nice and spins like butta!