In May we went up to New York where I visited a friend who has a farm. It was sheering season, and as she is just getting into the wool side of raising sheep, she still isn't too concerned with selling her wool directly, which meant that she gave me an entire fleece for free! It was dirty, there were second cuts, it was matted and full of vegetation, but it was free. So I brought it home and started working on it, though I didn't really know what I was doing.
This is what the wool did when I dumped it out of the bag I had brought it home in. Clearly I had my work cut out for me.
I started to spread it out and see what I had to work with.
I put a few ounces in
a bathtub full of cold water and let it soak for about a half hour or
so. Wow, I knew the wool was dirty when she gave it to me, but seeing
all the dirt in the water...Yikes.
Eventually the water began to clear and I could see how white the wool really was, instead of the light cream it first appeared to be.
After I pulled it out of the tub, I let it soak in the washing machine, with dish detergent to cut the sheep grease, hot water, and NO agitation. Things looked good, so I repeated the whole process with the rest of the wool...in one batch, not a good plan, but it came out fine, even if it did take a long time.
Now I am working on learning to comb so I can spin up this great wool from a lovely Cotswold/Border Leicester mix named Bella.
I've made it through a very rough ounce, and other than it being pretty slippery, hard to combine, and hard to draft as the fibers measure about 9 inches, it spins very nicely and makes some good soft yarn.
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