Watching and listening to the judges yesterday has permanently changed my fleece buying habits. Before yesterday, it was something of a luck-of-the-draw kind of thing when it came to picking out a fleece. Buying ones online was sort of a "well, that sounds good" kind of effort. Never again! Here's why: the following statement is accurate and truthful "This fleece, a lovely moorit Rombouillet, was judged at the Monterey Fair and can be yours for $xxx.xx." Did you know that a fleece can be rejected for sale at the fair because of poor quality, particularly fragile fleeces? But there is nothing to stop someone from selling it online to a poor ignorant soul, and nothing they could say in that made-up market pitch was untrue. Or, how about this statement: "This fleece won a ribbon at the Monterey Fair." Well, guess what. If there are only two or three entries in a class, they ALL get ribbons unless outright rejected!
So, if I got nothing else out of the judging, I learned a few critical questions to ask when it comes to buying a fleece, especially if a selling point is around it being judged.
Here's another thing to think about. The judging covers two broad categories, Breed and Market. The purpose of the Breed category is to judge a fleece against a breed standard. That breed standard says nothing whatsoever about whether or not the fleece is suitable for handspinners! A fleece being judged in the Breed category may be full of second cuts, less than ideally skirted, may have quite a bit of hay and grass and seriously dirty or matted tips. A farmer can win a blue ribbon for a fleece and it wouldn't be all that great for a handspinner to work with.
The Market category has its own quirks. The purpose of the Market category is to judge a fleece on how well it would sell at market. Here you can expect to find fleeces that may not conform to a particular breed standard, but they'll still be great fleeces for handspinners. The farmers have to pay more attention to how well the fleeces are skirted, and preference is given to fleeces that have been properly coated through the year, protecting the tips and leaving the fleece clean and unmatted. Sounds lovely, and it is, but even here things can be a bit misleading. Given that the goal is to judge how well a fleece would do at market, if you get two perfectly lovely fleeces equal in all respects except weight, the heavier fleece wins. Most handspinners are actually interested in smaller fleeces. If you're looking for a darling fleece, some of the ones that didn't get a ribbon will be exactly what you want - they missed only because they were smaller.
Now, you can get a fantastic-for-handspinner fleece from the Breed category. You can get a stellar example of a breed from the Market category. The point is, you need to ask the right questions!
Let's talk about some of the things the judges, Wes and Jane Patton, were looking for in the Market category. Just like with people, the first impression of the fleece was critical. As Jane Patton said, "A champion fleece needs to look like a champion." The first impression, where they took in the color, the cleanlines, the "character", really had a big impact. But that first impression could be spoiled if, as they dove in to the bag to sample different sections of the fleece, they found undesireable things. Things like inconsistent staple length, crimp, or fineness from one part of the fleece to another marked a fleece down. If they found the fleece was poorly skirted, with belly wool or sheep pellets still to be found, that marked the fleece down as well. A definite preference was shown to fleeces that held together - if you picked up a section and it looked like a halloween spider web decoration, that marked the fleece down too.
If a fleece was "tender" - if the locks just broke apart width-wise when tugged - that fleece was either marked down in rank or, if the problem was common throughout all samples of a given fleece, the fleece was removed entirely from judging and was sent back to the farmer. It would not go to auction. If a fleece showed other issues resulting from how the sheep were managed, those also impacted the rank of a market fleece. In the photo above, you see how the second lock from the left has that little wave in it towards the bottom? That isn't the crimp of the fleece. That's where something happened to the sheep to stress it for a bit and change its wool production. That something could have been anything in their environment, from diet to heat. That doesn't impact it's usability for handspinners, but if you took two fleeces equal in every way except for that wave, the one with the wave would be marked down.
Other things were talked about but rarely seen in the Market category. There were no examples in the fleeces entered for judging for canary stain, serious felting or matting problems, and so on. Some of the Breed fleeces were ever so slightly less than white (when they should have been bright white) which Wes Patton said was possibly bacterial stain, or something else in the environment.
Of course there was more to learn, and I am anxious to attend the auction in a few weeks. I've already got my list of fleeces I want to bid on, and my budget at the ready. I've got a carpool buddy, sockpr0n, who has her own list based on the judging this weekend. It's going to be great, and I will never look at a fleece the same way again.
Now, on to a week at the Golden Gate Fiber Institute summer intensive!!!
