Fiber Fun Wednesday -- Skirting, skirting and more skirting

Not everything about fiber is fun, but knowing what comes next, keeps me going.

Today I've been skirting. Well actually, I've been skirting all week, but today I realized....I'm NEVER going to be done. Sorry for the momentary whining.

This is back breaking work (constantly bending over the fleece) and pretty dirty too. My goal was to get all of this ready to ship out to the mill by the weekend. Not going to happen. The pile is huge and I've barely made a dent. I know, I know, someone's got to do it if I want all that alpaca yarn to knit with. I'm trying, honestly, to do it without complaining.

If you don't know what skirting is, it's basically cleaning up the shorn fleece and taking out all the unwanted bits. These are things that you don't want to find in your yarn. Things like hay, grass, crusty mud, poo, pee stains and any other undesirables you can think of. A lot of dirt gets shaken out at this point, too.

I'm still hoping to at least get it boxed up this weekend. I'll let you know if I do.

The before pic :o)