Fox Sheep Wool

I ordered a lot of 'new to me' wool from wollknoll recently. I still haven't had chance to open all the bags and look at them, but I did get a chance to look at a few the other day and make some batts. One of them was listed as 'Fox Sheep wool'. I'm guessing it is 'Coburg Fox Sheep'. I ordered this as 'fleece', which comes as pieces of a carded batt. This what mine looked like:

This is a close up:

I ran some through my drum carder and made a neat batt:

I made a sample about 10 x 10" and added some black viscose tops:

On the top half I added fluffed/mussed up viscose in various thicknesses and also laid it criss-cross in a couple of places:

On the bottom half, I fanned out the viscose tops:

This is a close up of the middle on the bottom:

And this is the middle of the top:

Whenever I've used black viscose it reminds me of 'bubble painting' - mixing washing up liquid with kids' ready mix paint and bubbling it up with straws- but these middle parts remind me of seaweed :) This is a close up of a part where I lay the viscose criss cross:

This is what the whole piece looks like on the back:

I suppose a good description of it would be spongey, but it really looks 'frothy' to me!

The staple length was really short and being so springy, it wasn't easy to get a nice even felt with just a couple of layers as you can see when I hold it up to the window:

I think I should add disclaimer that I cannot be held responsible for anyone who might get a bit carried away buying wool or fibres if they click any of my links to suppliers, since Leonor from Felt Buddies accused me of being an 'enabler' ;)  I must admit though, a lot of the recent fleece I bought would be really good for needlefelt sculptures of animals. Hopefully, I'll get to try more soon and post about it.