So I recently went to two fiber festivals and now have six fleeces in my house that are varying degrees of stinky and need to be processed. I have a project deadline coming up, so of course my brain decides now is a ~great time~ to procrastinate and wash a stinky fleece!
Here is a Jacob fleece that I picked up for the sole purpose of seeing if I could spin each color in the coat separately, then weave it back together into something with both colors. I took lots of video of the washing process but Tumblr mobile is a nightmare so I'm going to have the stick with stills.
The first step was separating the black and white sections from each other. I couldn't remember if the fleece had been skirted (had all the really horrible bits and poop removed) because I bought it in a novelty-induced dopamine haze, but it turns out it was! So that was lucky. I ended up having a lot of locks that were both black and white, so I made a third pile of mixed locks that I didn't feel like separating further.
Next was the washing/scouring, which I did in a plastic tub in my backyard. The fleece wasn't incredibly dirty but still immediately released a bunch of brown muck in the water when I submerged it.
I did two 20-minute soaks with the hottest tap water I could get and Power Scour (I actually have more of that than Dawn dish soap in my house rn), then a 20 minute rinse soak in hot water. I spun it out and laid it out to dry on this nifty herb drying rack thing.
It was dry enough to work with today and I couldn't resist combing out some of each color. I think it looks pretty neat!
I think I'm going to comb the rest of the fleece because I really like spinning from combed top, and I'll probably make it worsted for easier weaving. I'm waiting on the final weights of each color before deciding what draft to do.