Sorting the fleece

Now that his sheep have been shorn, Graeme Bethune has the critical task of selecting the best fleece to turn into yarn

- Graeme Bethune

THE SHEEP have all been clipped now and look so clean and tidy, and the barn has big piles of fleeces waiting to be sorted. For a year, I have been working to get this crop of wool up to harvest; up to this point, everything has been focused on helping the sheepies produce the best possible raw material. Their work is done - now it’s over to me to do justice to this awesome fleece.

I am ruthless when sorting fleeces. There is no easier way to ruin all the hard work gone before than to compromise at this point. My philosophy is, “It’s better to have better, not more”. I would rather have 100 kilos of fleece I can be absolutely sure is the best quality, than 150 kilos that might contain the merely average. This will be the last time I get to have a serious personal influence on the quality of my yarns, and so I take my time.