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Have I told you that I'm crazy? 


But at least I am not alone. Gen is crazy too. We bought what I think must have been the dirtiest sheep fleece ever. We redeemed ourselves by also buying a really great fleece. 

Caught up in dreams of wearing sweaters that we made from absolute scratch (i.e. from a raw fleece) Gen and I ordered a dirt cheap sheep fleece online. I wasn't really expecting a whole lot, I just wanted to have the experience of processing a whole fleece. The fleece arrived and sat at my house for probably a month until we had time to get together and clean it. And quite a cleaning it was!! "Dirt cheap" turns out to all to accurately describe our filthy little fleece.

I had done a little reconnaissance cleaning a few days before Gen came over just to see what we were up against. My washing Machine has the tiniest trickle of hot water, so I ferried buckets of hot water from my bathroom to the washing machine to fill 'er up. I put some fleece in mesh lingerie bags in the hot soapy water, and it instantly turned chocolate brown. I did a few more soapy rinses and finally a vinegar rinse, and the wool was much cleaner.

Gen and I abandoned the first rinse in the washing machine. SOOO much dirt came out in this rinse that we just left the hot water in buckets in my tub and dunked the fleece bags in them. A much better idea. We continued to rinse and spin the fleece in the washing machine after the initial rinse. Whew! What a lot of work. it took all day. and, it was really gross. Though our fleece was supposed to have been skirted (all the super-gross parts and second cuts removed) it could have used a lot more. There was a TON of vegetable matter, and a lot of it is finely ground and stayed in the wool even after we were done washing it. Most (but not all) of it falls out when you spin the wool.
Here is some of the finished product:



Two days after we completed this task, Maxine's fleece arrived! We had reserved a coated fleece from skylines farms , and let me tell you it is a complete dream! there is almost no vegetable matter, and wool is so long and colorful. I think that both Gen and I will try to spin this one in the grease. All we did to it is split it in half!




 

Posted: Thu - April 7, 2005 at 05:08 PM           |

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