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As promised, here's a post about how I'm preparing the fleece I bought at the Royal Winter Fair. This is the fleece as it arrived home in a big shopping bag:

I've done a lot of reading lately on how to do this. I've ordered lots and lots of library books on the topic and read them pretty much cover to cover.

Once the locks are washed they needed to be picked apart before putting them on a drum carder. Then the drum carder combs the fleece into a batt which can be divided into roving so that it's ready to spin. You can also use drum carders to blend a variety of fleeces together. I'd like to try one sometime, but for now they're out of the budget at hundreds of dollars. In the future I may rent one.

Another way is to buy two hand carders (or mini-carders) and comb a small amount of locks at a time. Then you can roll up the fleece vertically into rolags for woolen spinning (lofty and fuzzy) or roll it up horizontally to make roving for worsted spinning (smoother, with aligned fibres). You can also use special sharp combs to comb out long locks.

The last way, which is the least expensive, is to just use a flick brush to comb out each lock. A dog brush works just as well, and that's what I have. As usual I'm trying to do things the simplest way I can without too many fancy tools, so that's one of the reasons I chose a fleece with well-defined locks so I could prepare it this way.

After flicking, I place the locks in a basket always aligned the same way

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Yesterday we went to the Royal Winter Fair. I've been keen to go and attend the wool auction. They also had a drop spindle competition, and several spinning and weaving groups demonstrating spinning on a spinning wheel and weaving on a loom.

The main event was a sheep to shawl competition where the participants spin the yarn straight from the fleece, then weave a shawl which ends up being judged then finally sold at the wool auction. They also auctioned the skeins that were spun on drop spindles but I was there for a fleece!

Beforehand they have long tables with all the fleeces laid out so you can have a look (and touch!) before bidding. They also print out a catalogue at the last minute once they have all the information about the fleeces. Fleeces are sold by the pound, so you bid a price per pound that you want to pay.

There's a range of sizes, this time there were fleeces weighing from 3.2 to 11.2 pounds. I wanted a smaller fleece, in a continuing effort to not fill our house entirely with craft things.
I used my catalogue to write notes about the fleeces I was interested in bidding on. I didn't really know how much they would go for, so I didn't want to fixate on one special fleece and end up with nothing if it was too expensive. The prices ended up at $4.50/lb up to $21/lb.

There's a wide range, this is one of the white fleeces, soft and fluffy with a fine crimp:
This one was the grand prize winner, fine and soft with a tiny crimp:

Surprisingly the prices weren't always based on whether the fleece had won a prize. Some of the top prize winners went for very reasonable prices of $6 - $7 per pound. I was writing down all the prices during the auction to try to see how much I should bid on my favourites. It was a bit nerve wracking. Near the end the prices seemed to be going right up, and I still hadn't won a fleece. There was a white one I wanted but it went up to

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