This spring, Jackie has immersed herself in all things fiber.  She has been taking weaving and spinning classes in Waco at the Ploughshare Institute for Sustainable Culture and has just had a grand time learning from them by taking various courses.  Jackie has found a great resource for fiber at WC Mercantile in Navasota, and for her birthday, she got a spinning wheel from them to go along with her loom she got from the folks in Waco.  I will work to post photos of her work so you can see how she is progressing.

I work with Shawn Ramsey, who is a professor in the Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University and who specializes in all things sheep and goats including the fibers from them.  When I told Shawn that Jackie was getting into spinning and weaving, he told me that he had some wool and mohair that would be good for her to look at and see if she could use.

We met Shawn at the Pearce Pavilion where he stores the fleeces he uses for teaching for a tour.  What a great storehouse of all kinds of fibers to learn about.  Shawn showed us different fleeces with different spinning counts and grease amounts.  We saw fibers from fine wool and medium wood sheep along with some mohair from kids and adult Angora goats.  Shawn gave Jackie some samples of cleaned wool and mohair tops to play with to see what she could do with them.  Jackie told him that she would be glad to bring her spinning wheel up to campus to show his students how to spin so I think that there will be a good trade off happening soon.

I am including some of the photos from our visit so you can see the different types of wool and mohair Shawn had, and we will see what Jackie can do with her samples.  Stay tuned!