Showing Fleeces (Caution - Your Eyes May Glaze Over)

A while ago someone asked how we choose a fleece for a show.  The quick answer is 'one that makes your jaw drop when you see it."  That's true, but more goes into choosing and preparing a fleece although the 'wow factor' is part of it.

Fleeces are shown not just to attract buyers and gain notoriety for a farm but also to help the producer gauge what progress they're making toward reaching the ideal for their breed as described in the breed standard.  All recognized breeds (of all species - sheep, horses, fowl, etc.) have written standards that individuals must meet to be eligible to be registered.  This includes ranges of acceptable height, weight and color, and traits or faults that prevent registration. In sheep the fleece characteristics are very important and each breed description includes the ideal crimp, staple length, luster, color, grade, grease content and other parameters for the wool.  Whether card grading or judging classes of like fleeces to determine the ultimate "best one" a judge should still rely on the breed standard to dictate what he/she is looking for.  Fleeces of crossbred animals can be stunning and worthy of being shown.  They are divided into fine, medium, long and coarse classes (for both white and colored/non-white categories) but the judge should still be considering the listed breed mix and determine whether the result is appropriate for the blend as regards length, weight, crimp and grade.  And the ideal fleece will have all the positive traits in overwhelming abundance - identical crimp nose to tail, staple length even everywhere, grade the same from shoulder to britch.

So, what does a fleece judge look for?  First, are there any faults?  Faults include fiber weakness or breaks, second cuts, excessive VM (vegetable matter, aka chaff), cotting/felting/webbing of the locks, bad smells (mildew, urine, mothballs) and bugs (moths, lice, keds) and are big reasons to quickly be eliminated.  Having narrowed the field down, the judge then looks for the positives.  Is the overall weight right for the breed?  Is the staple length appropriate?  Crimp, luster, etc.are all considered and the fleece best meeting the breed ideal is placed on top.

A buyer will judge fleeces based on their own needs rather than the fleece's comparison to an ideal.   Soundness, cleanliness, color, hand, luster and length may all stand in a different order of importance to a fiber artist who is looking for certain things and may not care that the fleece is smaller then the breed standard suggests it should be.  A commercial buyer is going to be very concerned with uniformity of the fiber by grade and purity of color.  Black fibers in white fleeces will be completely unacceptable to them. These are things a producer might consider when choosing fleeces for a show and sale.  Am I hoping to impress the judge or a buyer?

Likewise, the producer has to weigh the best traits of his/her fleeces against each other when deciding which to show.  Is this one's luster more impressive or that one's length?  This one is soooo soft, but it's not very big.  It's like asking a parent to decide which of their kids is better!  ;-)

Once decisions are made the fleece has to be properly prepared for show.  All fleece shows have clear rules, such as those here at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, but basically the producer wants to take away anything that detracts from the fleece while presenting it in an attractive manner.

Step one - get the fleece on the skirting table.

 This is Large Marge.  Although we try to be careful bagging the fleece after shearing it's always somewhat disarrayed and needs to be unfolded, flipped over and arranged with the cut side down and in a cohesive 'sheep shape'.  Here she really fills the table - head is at the top and tail is at the bottom. I then go around the fleece and take off any fiber that's got any kind of problem.  Marge was not covered during summer so the fleece tips are faded from the sun.  But she was covered during hay feeding season so the fleece is totally free from debris and doesn't have a swath of crud down the middle of her back requiring removal.

This fleece is Carmel's.  She's a moorit who is fading as time goes on.  Her fleece has uneven crimp in some places such as the lower foreleg and ribs but it's all pretty.  The darker lock lying on the others is much crimpier and looks shorter but if stretched out is almost the same length.  I suppose a judge could find fault with those areas being left in but it's sound and usable and a handspinner would sort the fleece by texture or color anyway so I left that type in.

Color shouldn't count either for or against a fleece (unless a fleece is stained with something - urine, marking crayon, red clay dirt) but I wanted to show how this fleece is fading.  Here the cut end (closest to the skin/most recently grown) is noticeably lighter than the tips. Next year she will be the color of warm sand.

And as the fleece is folded into the traditional English roll any second cuts that haven't fallen through the slats will come to light and can be picked out.  Even a very good shearer will inevitably leave a few short second cuts.  

Here's Large Marge again, folded and ready to go back in the bag.

Then it's off to the show for judging, both by 'the judge' and also by potential buyers!

Coffee and an English Roll, Please

Now that lambing is almost over I'm starting to skirt fleeces.  I really enjoy this task.  It's my chance to take my time and fondle handle each fleece and assess its quality, both individually and how it stacks up against previous generations.  Am I making the progress I want in staple length, consistency, luster, etc?  So much easier when the fleece is lying there, not jumping around!

The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is coming up fast.  I've gone for about 20 years now, and always take fleeces for the show and sale.  To preregister, I need to decide which fleeces to take and get them skirted and weighed and the form sent in.  When fleeces are reserved from our fleece list for spinners I kind of hate to put them in the show since I can't sell them there, and I'm always concerned something bad will happen to them in transit, so I've lately used first shearing fleeces from yearlings for the Festival. 

Today I worked on a ewe called Copper.  She is a medium wool moorit who is starting to fade in an uneven mottled manner.  It's a lot prettier than it sounds.

I start by bringing the bagged fleece up from storage in the lower barn and tipping it onto the skirting table.

Fleece right out of the bag

 As long as the sheep didn't have a tantrum during shearing the fleece will generally hold together in one big piece.  We try to put the shorn fleece into the bag with as little twisting or flipping as possible and so it unrolls fairly well on the table.  I carefully work it into the proper shape, with the head and one end and tail at the other.

Copper on the table

I start on the side of the fleece where the belly wool is still attached (that's the dark brown lump on the right side of the fleece).  I work my way around the fleece dropping totally trashed wool on the floor and putting marginal wool that needs some TLC to become nice roving in a bag to deal with later.  When I'm done skirting, I've taken off the neck roll, belly wool, lower leg wool that's short and less-than-perfect, anything from the britch that's drastically different in texture, and wool from around the butt.

100% clean and prime for spinning

When showing a fleece you want to present it in the best way possible.  The accepted method is to put it in an English Roll.  First you fold one side of the fleece into the center.

Right side folded to center



Then you fold the other side in and on top of the first part.

Second side folded and ready to roll

I put the mouth of the bag the fleece will go into under the neck end of the fleece.  Now the fleece is rolled from the butt end toward the neck end.  When the fleece is rolled to the edge of the table I bring the bag up and carefully feed the fleece into the bag letting gravity help me.  When it plops into the bag the neck and shoulders will be at the top of the bag.  This is typically where the nicest grade of fleece on the sheep is, so the fleece is showing off its best qualities.  Of course the judge will dig and paw inspect the fleece that's deep in the bag, but this method shows off the best parts immediately.  Actually, I prepare all the fleeces this way so that the spinner who buys it could tip it out of the bag, unroll it and lay it out in perfect shape so that if they decide to split the fleece or divide it in any way they can do it.

Ready for judging



Six more to skirt. 

Where's that coffee?