A treasure trove

I was camping this weekend at an SCA event, when a dear friend who knows of my fiber interests gave me a hand written treasure map. At X marks the spot, there were 4 lawn sized garbage bags to be found. My husband and I left the camping event, and went hunting.

We came back with the 4 bags. The next day, we started dividing them up. One bag was broken open, and shared out amongst about a half a dozen folks still on site. One bag went up north to Ered Sul, the Flagstaff chapter of the SCA, to be parted out there. The other two came home with me, and are in the picture above.

What was in these bags?


Wool! Lots and lots of wool, straight off of the sheep. The story goes that these are either from Rambouilett or Suffolk sheep (probably not full breed). There was someone in the area who raised the sheep, but decided not to sell or use the wool this year. When they sheared the sheep, they simply bagged the wool up and put it out for the garbage man. Their neighbor rescued it, put it at their own curb, and told my friend in the SCA about it. My friend dashed out, squished two bags into her car (to be taken down to southern AZ and divided up amongst fiber artists there), and realized she didn't have room for the rest. So she wrote out the treasure map, and sent me on my quest. Whee!

Today I broke into my two bags, and skirted the 5 fleeces that I found inside. I'm going to keep the brown fleece, and one of the white fleeces. The other three got put into 4 bags, and will go to new homes before too long.


Isn't this beautiful stuff? Looks like I'm going to be spending the next couple of days washing fleece!

(If you are local to Phoenix, and would like some wool, let me know. Two of the four bags are already spoken for, but that leaves two more people who could share in the bounty.)

EDIT: The bags are spoken for. Now lots of people get to play, too!