Sorry to take so long to respond, we've been lambing the last 10 days and I swear we're having in one year all the problems we never had before! Including a ewe Zack jugged with her twins, then gave corn like he always does (I always said we should wait a couple days so as not to stimulate too much milk production, but he does things his own way). Result: she literally inhaled some corn and started to cough and gag. She seemed better, and we sheared her the next day, but that afternoon she was dead, and we had a pair of bottle babies.
We *almost* managed to graft them onto a ewe who also had twins just after we found the dead mom - we rolled the orphans and put them in with the newborns. She actually did let the orphans nurse a few times, but within 24 hours was butting them both away. Fortunately, we have more buyers for bottle babies than babies to sell, so 2 hours after I put the word out via email, they were off our hands, to be pets for a little girl :) Anyway, my thanks to all for the responses on pricing handspun yarn. I found it interesting that no one mentioned the preparation of the fiber, in the sense of whether working from roving or top, and what quality of roving. I've seen some really awful stuff folks wanted spun :) And it's also interesting, the dichotomy between charging by the yard vs by the finished weight. In the US, at least, the vast majority of yarns are sold by weight, yet for handspinners the usual recommendation is to price by the yard. Not saying there's anything good or bad about either, just noting the difference. Thanks again for all the responses, I appreciate it! Holly
