De-fleecing with Miriam

Miriam called me when I first lived in Mendocino and asked if I would help her de-fleece a lamb. I was mystified by whatever that might mean and went to the house. There she had a fresh, clean bloody lambskin with the fleece still attached, truly nauseating by my squeamish standards, and she wanted help detaching the fleece. Neither of us had any experience in this and we had to improvise the whole way. The fleece loses its oomph when you take it from a dead creature versus a live creature. Very sad. But somehow we accomplished this with great care, and I took the fleece home to clean, card, and spin it. I sprayed some lanolin on it to revive it a bit, taking care now with its fragility. Some of the yarn I dyed with mushrooms, but mostly kept it the natural white and knitted it into a small tea cosy, which I gave to Miriam for the very first mushroom arts exhibit in Ukiah (I think it was there). Then it traveled around the US and across the Atlantic and was photographed and featured in Carla Sundstrom’s book in Sweden.

—Susan Maresco