What we are asking is for customers to pre-skirt and monkey-groom their fiber before shipping it to us. 
 I know this can be a pain…..I did 13 tons of it last year….LOL  and have been doing it for 6 years now. 

 Prepping fiber before it’s sent is a big boost to you!

You won’t believe how much money you save by getting rid of any bad fiber and VM, both in processing cost and in the shipping to us.  The time it takes to get it back will decrease and the product you get back will even be an improved quality!…..If that is even possible. This will also allow us to focus more on details in the carding, to get that look of color arrangements you may want, etc..

Ok, what the heck is skirting and monkey-grooming some may ask? Well it’s just what it sounds like.  Please though, don’t eat what ya find!

Skirting is simply going around the outside edge of the fleece while it’s laid out open, weathered side up. 
Tear out areas of manure and britch.  If your not sure which is the britch area, it is easy to spot in most fleeces. 

The fiber in this area is crunchy and coarse and has the appearance of over-lapping shingles
compared to the rest of the fleece.  If you don’t spot these areas, don’t worry, you may find it later when you monkey-groom. 

If your britch wool is clean of manure and grease tags, save it till you have a couple of pounds and then process it as a batch.  Britch wool makes great braided, and woven rugs.  I have several pairs of socks that are made out of it.  Jamie calls them my ‘butt hair’ socks.  I have bags of wool in my studio labeled ‘matt’s butt hair’.  Definitely a conversation starter for visitors. 

Now the manure tags are crunchy ornaments  with wool hanging out.    LOL…..easy to spot!

While skirting, another area to get rid of is the grease tags. 
These just don’t wash well and usually are badly stained if they do clean up. 
Throwing these away is not a waste of quality fiber! 

The grease tags are usually found on the sides of the fleece around the belly area.
My theory is that when the lanolin gets hot during the summer heat, the excess  slides done the sides of the
belly and pools at the bottom…………just like a White Castle. 

I have no way of testing this theory.  It’s just a thought.  Grease tags are very easy to spot when you have them. 
They look like a lock of wool covered in a ball of black tar. 
If you squeeze them in your fingers…yuck….they feel like cold, sticky tar.

At the opposite end of the crunchy ornaments,  between the areas of grease balls, is the neck area. 

Sometimes this can be absolutely horrible with VM (vegetable matter). 
If the VM to fiber ratio is quickly approaching 50/50… throw…it…out! 

A thought to keep in mind is that your roving is only going to be the quality of your lowest quality fiber. 
If you leave this heavily polluted area in, it will never clean out and your whole bag of roving will be full of it. 
Sometimes it will shake out, but it’s rare.

Now, what you have left after skirting is usually night and day different from the mess you started with. 
This is good!  Time now for the Monkey-grooming.

We use to call this ‘picking’, but that’s a different operation of processing  and we were confusing people. 
So we called it poop picking, but how can you refer to an employee as a poop-picker? 
So one day the term came…ah HA!…monkey-grooming!  We can use this, and do this, in public and not get arrested. 

Plus people know exactly what we mean, and how to do it without explanation. 

I am going to give a little explano’ though.

The way we do it here is to tear out of the skirted fleece an area about the size of a dinner plate. 
Give this piece a really good shaking if you can.  A heck of a lot of varmits will fall out on their own. 

You will also see the second cuts go flying.  If the fleece you are working with is of an open lock structure, and won’t hold together for shaking.  Then you're up the creek without a cracker. It will all have to be done by hand.

Once you’ve given your small area a good shake, lay it out again on your lap or skirting frame.
Go over it now, like a monkey grooming it’s friend, and pull out any bits of veggie you can. 
This really is not bad at all.  Some good music and a glass of wine, maybe even a friend for company,
makes the job enjoyable.  Here’s a good one for you……
Have your hubby read out loud a good book while you groom your monkey. 

I have found that you can’t snack on chips while you're doing this.

The lanolin on your fingers seems to transfer easily onto greasy foods. 

It gives the Doritos a bitter taste.

For a re-cap:

step1):Skirting:                                  step 2): Monkey-grooming

_____________________                   _____________________

Pullout:  Manure tags                          shake out fleece

               Britch                                    pick out any VM you can

               Grease tags                            pick out any second cuts
Heavy VM areas                              

Once your done with your skirting and monkey-grooming,  your ready to bag up your prepped fiber.  Inside the bag put a note with any information you may want for the future.  I would suggest the animal’s name, breed, and year of shearing.  Also it saves time if you also label the bag as ‘prepped’.  Later on you may have a storage area full of fleeces. It’s nice to see at a glance whether you’ve done anything to each fleece.  So it might be handy to write this on the outside of the bag also.