Open fleece. I roll my fleeces by folding them in thirds lengthwise and then rolling them from one end to the other. If you are careful when you open up the fleece it will stay in “sheep shape”. Lamb fleeces don’t stay together as well. Unroll your fleece outside or spread out a sheet on the floor. The shorn side will be down.
No need to skirt. When you buy a fleece from Meridian Jacobs it will already be skirted. That means that the more ragged wool has been removed from the edges, as has particularly dirty wool (hay debris in the neck wool and manure clumps at the rear). My sheep are not coated, so it’s difficult to keep hay and other debris out of the fleeces entirely. I skirt out the problem areas, and fleeces with excess VM are not sold to hand-spinners. The coarser britch wool may have been removed, but not always. This is wool from the lower part of the back legs. If that wool looks and feels much different than the rest, you will want to sort it and spin it separately—the yarn will have a different character than yarn spun from the rest of the fleece.
Sort. After you unroll the fleece you are looking at the wool as if you were looking at the outside of the sheep. Flip it over to see the colors more easily. You can sort the fleece into colors before or after washing or you may prefer to spin your fleece without any sorting. Remember that if you have a spotted fleece carded at a mill without sorting it you will end up with gray.
Scour. See FAQ about washing fleece.
Prepare to spin. You may choose to card, flick, or comb your Jacob wool depending on fleece characteristics and on the desired yarn. Is the fleece long or short, crimpy or wavy? Does it have large patches of color or is it freckled? Do you want to keep the colors separate, systematically blend them, or work with the colors randomly? Do you want to spin a very fine yarn or a heavy one, a smooth yarn or novelty yarn? The possibilities are endless.