Washing Wool

It occurred to me this morning that the comment I made in yesterday's post about my husband not finishing things in a timely manner wasn't exactly fair. I didn't mean to imply that he doesn't do things for me all the time... For example, working hard so we can buy more yarn feed our family. And then, when he really sets his mind to something (like our backyard wall) it gets done in hardly any time at all. And then there are sweet little surprise things like this...Phil mounted two of these beautiful hanging baskets on our front porch the night before Mother's Day while I was out scrapbooking. He turned the porch light off so I wouldn't see them when I came home and would be surprised in the morning. Isn't that nice? See, I really do love him.

Now, back to the knitting stuff... I was telling you about the fleece. It was filthy and full of lanolin and people who know me know I'm not the kind of person who doesn't mind sitting in my living room with a lapful of sheep dung. I just had to get it clean before I would spin it. For some reason, I thought I could do this without much effort. I piled one of the raw fleeces into my bathtub, put the plug in, and filled it with hot water. Now, those of you who have done this before are probably cringing right now. This created a kind of steamy brown poop soup mixture which really grossed me out. I thought, "Now what?!" So, I did what I should have done before I started and googled "washing wool fleeces." Here's what I found out:

I should have skirted the fleece first - that means spreading it out on your lawn or wherever and pulling off all the edges that have big clumps of sheep doo on them. Then, I should have turned up the temp on my hot water heater and filled my bathtub with the hottest water possible (may not be such a good idea with young children in the house...) Finally, I should have put the wool into baskets before gently setting them into the water to soak. The baskets help you to lift the fleece out of the water before draining the tub. Great... So, after I let the fleece soak for a little while, I took off my wedding ring and watch and had to stick my arms in up to the elbows and try to hold the extremely heavy saturated wool away from the drain while the water was let out. Lots of dirty water went down the drain, but the wool was still very dirty. Let me tell you - picking wet "tags" off of a fleece is not the most pleasant experience. (Keep in mind, Phil was patiently watching the kiddos while I did all this.) I picked over it the best I could and filled the tub again with the hottest water I could (which was not extremely hot since I didn't think it was safe to turn up the water heater.) Then I had to gently push the fleece back in without agitating it too much so it wouldn't felt in the process. After this rinse, I still thought it looked a little dirty but better than it was before, and I had two other fleeces to wash so I didn't want to use up too much water by washing it once more. I asked Phil to get one of the screens off of a window and place it over our tub in the other bathroom (which he did promptly I might add - probably due to the frantic tone of my voice) and help me to lift the outrageously heavy fleece into a laundry basket. Then we pushed as much water out of it as we could and carried it with towels underneath (dripping water the whole way) to spread it out over the screen. We opened the window and closed the door thinking it would dry in a couple of days.

Well, a week went by and the fleece was still not dry. I tried moving bits of it around, pulling out more pieces of muck that seemed to get more matted together each day, and worrying about those two other fleeces in my garage which were probably attracting moths. It was not very encouraging to have a stinky, still dirty, damp fleece suspended over my bathtub... and I was still going to have to pick and card it all! I started to think, there's got to be a better way to do this. There's got to be a way to get out of doing all this work when someone gifts you with raw fleece and you are not cut out for this type of operation. Then, I thought about my friend Gretchen who owns a wool mill here in town and goes to the spinning guild. I gave her a call and told her that I needed advice and that I'd nearly ruined a perfectly good fleece just by trying to wash it. Gretchen told me not to worry and that she washes fleece for other people all the time... for $2.50 per lb! She has a special "extractor" machine that gets most of the water out of it so it dries faster too. For $7 per lb, she'd even pick and card it for me. I asked her about the wet fleece and she told me to bring it to the guild anyway and she'd take a look at it. Well I did, and she said it looked like it would come out just fine - she would even take into consideration that it was wet when she weighed it for pricing. What a sweetie. I'm so grateful that I'm going to have professionally washed (and dried) fleece ready for carding and spinning by the next guild meeting. Phew!

I know some of you out there are thinking I'm completely wimping out here. I'm telling you that this experience was somewhat traumatic for me - I mean I really was beside myself thinking I had totally messed up this beautiful fleece, and stunk up my master bathroom in the process. Plus, isn't this supposed to be a hobby I enjoy? Give me a break. I love sheep, I love their farmers, and I love their wool. I just don't think I should have to deal with any more poop than I already do on a day-to-day basis, ya know?

Hee, hee... Check out what my husband just handed me...I guess he really does love me too. :)