It isn't dry yet.

1 day later. It's not dry yet. And it's still sticky. Will have to wash it again. I think the key here is LOTS and lots of dawn dishsoap to cut the lanolin and a really good long soak.

Sheep Soup

Wash Day!
Ingredients:
1 tub
1 bag of fleece
1/2 c dishwashing liquid
hot water



What you see in the pictures is one of the three fleeces given to me by Nina's dad. I'm washing a little differently this time, having learned from the mistakes on batches 1 and 2.

Hot water, dish soap to cut the lanolin, and NO AGITATION! Just before Thanksgiving, I got a book in the mail along with my top whorl drop spindle. I'm following the instructions in that book for cleaning the greasewool. While this soaks, I'm working on my drop spindle spinning..which is going really well actually. I can make yarn fairly consistent in thickness. Next, I'll try for thinner yarn and see how that goes.

This fleece is going to soak for an hour, then I'll start the rinse cycles. I'll use warm water, not cold, so it doesn't shock the wool. I'm reading up online on where to get some top merino roving so I can try a bit of blended fingering weight wool. If I get REALLY squirrely, I may try spinning some alpaca or something other than wool.

So for now, we have sheep soup and the bathroom smells like a barn. But the lanolin is coming out, and a few rinses from now, I will have wool ready to dry over the heat ducts! Yea!!

First Wash complete. This is a ton of work. Here are a few things I've learned:

• When you take out the stopper in the tub, the entire fleece will try to leap down the drain.
• I think I'm glad I lost my sense of smell.
• First rinse is when you find all the poo nuggets that you failed to find before making tea/soup out of them.
• Sheep do not grow their coats uniformly. Thus, you get fleece fibers, plus 'kibbles and bits'. Which try to leap down the drain. And fit. Unlike the whole fleece.

After the rinse, I thought, gosh, this isn't as bad as I thought! I drained the fleece and put it by the back door to dry. It was then that I realized that no, I didn't really get all of the lanolin out in the first wash...it was that my hands were covered in lanolin after the rinse, so the fleece no longer felt sticky.

I'm going to let this batch dry anyway so I can get a feel for what one cleaning will do. The color variation in the wool struck me again - if this makes it to yarn-stage, it'll be hella fun to knit.

Now, to go bleach the tub. :)

Fresh Off The Bah! - Trials and tribulations of dealing with raw wool

Monday after work I picked up the fleece that my co-worker’s dad had set aside for me. I have 3 big trashbags that are each fairly full of raw greasewool. I’m surprised at the color variation. One fleece is a nice rich black, another is mostly grey.

So last night I tried washing my first bits of fleece. I tied up a t shirt and stuffed it w wool and ran it through the normal cold wash cycle. The sheep owner swore that’s what the local ladies would do to wash their fleece before spinning it. I tried it but forgot the cardinal rule of felting = Agitation = felting. The gentle cycle doesn’t work on our washer, so I used the normal cycle. The fleece washed up nicely and also felted up pretty nicely too. I’m going to run it through a few more times just to get experience with how this stuff felts. I included pictures of before, during and after. The ‘after’ is the road kill looking stuff on top of the dryer, next to my car keys.


Next step – dawn dishwashing liquid in the soak tub, hot water, hand washing out the lanolin after a good soaking. I’ll do as little agitation as possible so the fleece stays pretty much intact and is easier to work with.

I have someone lined up to card this into roving once it’s clean. I’m also told that I can use something called a flicker and ‘flick’ it, and spin it directly from that.

I bought a supercheapo top whorl drop spindle off the web and have watched some youtube tutorials on spinning. I see where I was going wrong when I tried it last time with my home-made spindle. I’m encouraged that the next attempt will go better. If not, I’m only out a $6 spindle.

If you would like to attempt to wash, card, spin or otherwise fold, spindle and fiddle with the raw wool, you are welcome to come! Come get it!!! As I work through the bags and wash it all, I’ll have clean de-lanolin-ed wool available for felting, carding, flicking or spinning.

Reminder –January is when Dale says he’ll have baby lambs, so after the new year, maybe we can road trip out to Johnstown and see his sheepz!