I went to the Valley Fiber Arts Guild and Anchorage Spinners and Weavers Guild fiber retreat this last weekend. I haven’t been inspired to knit for a while - and I didn’t do any knitting while I was there. But I did do some spinning, and I enjoyed that.

I even bought two fleeces, the sheared coat of a sheep, then I took a class on how to grade the fleeces, which is basically just learning how to determine where the neck is, where the rear is, etc. You want to be able to separate out the ‘blanket’, which is where a horse blanket would lay, as that is the finest wool on the sheep. The rest of the wool is not as good quality, and you don’t want to mix it all together, as the poorer quality wool will drag down the lesser quality wool.

It was neat, except one of the fleeces we graded was of a ram. Rams stink. Really stink. I thought I was going to hurl. I had to ask if it was normal for it to smell like that… yes. I mean, I know these are barnyard animals, but whooee, that is stinky.