Meet Sage.
Meet Isolde. (Isolde is too much woman for me so I'm sharing her with Lynn in Tucson, who sent me with money to Taos and said DON'T BRING ME A FLEECE. So I only brought her half. So there.)
Sage is a moorit CVM from Windy Hill Farm (no site). When they shear, they shear down the middle, then down the sides, so her fleece was shorn in half. In the top picture, one half is tips up, one half (the taupe) is cut ends up. I was just going to take pics and blog, but she was so pretty lying there, I had to play with her some. Currently, she's soaking in a hot bath. She was a dirty girl (she was wearing a coat, but still) so she's changed a bit after her wash down. The brown is still deep and chocolatey, but her tips have washed out almost white, and her undersides are a beautiful silvery taupe, with some cinnamon bits. All in all, she's one sexy sheep.
Isolde is a silver Corriedale from Gleason's Fine Woolies. (No, I do not have another silver corriedale fleece at home. I do not know what you are talking about.) She has amazing crimp, and while she wasn't skirted as well as Sage, she's reasonably clean too. I expect she'll lighten a bit when we wash her. Lynn couldn't resist and took a bit of her home last week from knit night (why yes, I do bring 12 pounds of greasy wool out to the bookshop, why do you ask?) and washed, carded and spun her up. From Lynn's description, I'm going to get lots of pleasure from Isolde too.
Taos was wonderful - my stepdaughter met us there and took the boys so I could spend the whole day with Angie. We visited every booth, ogled the sexy cowboy spinning yarn with his boots off, ate cinnamon pecans and smoothies and kibbees and green chile and had more lemon drop martinis than this woman will admit to. (Angie stuck with the margaritas.) I got to meet Wilson, who seemed nice, although a little dazed by all the wool fumes in the air, and Bug got to see a shearing demonstration, and pet angora rabbits and pick out his very own yarn for a hat. (Pic of that later, I'm due back to rinse Sage in a bit.)
