Over the last year I've mentioned I'd love to learn to spin wool into yarn a few times, and being me I wanted to start from the beginning. Well, Aaron took me seriously and a few weeks ago, came home with a surprise. Three bags of unprocessed sheep's fleece, also called grease fleece. One of his customers mentioned they had some sheep and couldn't even give away the fleece.
I didn't quite know what to do with this stuff, so it went in the attic for a couple weeks. My philosophy is, with enough time, books, googling, and rarely, some hands on instruction, I can learn anything. So online I went and I found a pretty comprehensive how to. I gathered my supplies (lingerie bags, long rubber gloves, and dawn dish soap), oddly enough I didn't actually own any of these things. Although, I'm now a fan of rubber gloves. Especially long pink ones. =0) Then I set out on my journey..
The first step is to pick out most of the debris, and since these fleece were free.... well let's just say the price was reflected in the quality. There was a lot of debris (vegetable matter, dung, urine, etc..) and I had to get rid of the really matted /dirty sections. I assume those were the belly/neck areas. Most people who have sheep and sell the fleece will "skirt" the fleece before they pack it away, which means take out the major debris and also the belly, leg, and neck sections (mostly done in shearing, but then again before the fleece are packed away). Also some folks have their sheep wear special coats to keep vegetable matter off them. These particular fleece were shoved all willy nilly into black trash bags, which is a bad idea, but free is free and the lanolin didn't seem to have set in, so I figured might as well try it out..
This thing smelled bad, like a dirty sheep.
Skirting the fleece....
The nasty sections we had to cull out.
Then I started the washing process, basically a tub of hot hot water, some dawn dish soap, let soak, drain and spin (never agitate, or the wool will felt, they mean it too. I had some felt on me, because I was impatient and swished it around to clean it faster).
Take the wool out, refill with hot water, no soap, put the wool back in and soak again for a few minutes. Drain and spin.
Repeat until water is clear, which takes awhile.
I didn't use the lingerie bags the first time around, but I did the second time and that made the whole process much easier.
Then lay it out to dry, I put mine on an old screen thingy on top of a dog crate, Roxie loved having a sheep on top of her.
Here's a closer look.
Next up, combing wool.....
and then.....
spinning...
Neither of which I know how to do, but remember what I said about time, google, and books.
