#romeldale

[livingadagio]

After many months of ignoring it, the bag of the rest of the Romeldale CVM fleece has been dragged out today for more wool to be washed.

Our water heater was replaced a few months ago so now we get almost boiling water straight out of the tap (hence my poor burned fingers lol), and it lasts all day even with multiple people in the house using it. Since we actually have hot water now I can finally finish washing this fleece (because I am too chronically fatigued to stand around boiling water on the stove for this shit, let's be real).

Now my kitchen gets to smell like dirty farm animal and Unicorn Power Scour for the rest of the day, woo. And after this is done I will continue to ignore the other entire unwashed Tunis fleece still sitting in another bag lul

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Tour de Fleece prep, part 2: Cleaning my fleece.

Washing and carding and such could be part of the main Tour work, but I want to have something to start on the wheel the first day. So far I've washed it all, and it's now drying in the sun on the porch. I've just started working on the dirty tips with my little combs, but I think after that I'll actually do a carded prep, mainly bc I have hand cards and haven't really used them yet.

[bethama]

The tips are burnt to a crisp in some places, there's a crazy amount of VM ground into others... despite all that, not unhappy with the bits I've sampled so far. I should hunker down and actually research how to buy a fleece before I do so again, though.

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Baa baa colorful sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, six bags full!

I got a bunch of Romeldale fleece, for free, from a local farm. Note that this is me showing great restraint, because she had at least 30 bags, and was giving them all away. Now to learn to process raw fleece for spinning! I should probably get that old wheel fixed up, too...

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

I'm getting started cleaning my TDF fleece in advance, because the prep work is slow. Washing one salad spinner's worth at a time matches my spindle spinning speed well, but it'll be far too easy to get stuck here with the wheel.

So far I've got it sorted into "good stuff", which is most of then fleece, "long & coarse", and "compost", and I'm starting washing some tonight.

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Combing! I'm using uncapping forks (new ones, but as a beekeeper I was already familiar with them, and they're less than $5 each) and a piece of wood I intended for a spindle whorl as a diz.

I'm pleased to see how well this gets out the smaller bits of vegetable matter, and the short pieces/second cuts. This is definitely a slow way to do this, but then I'm a slow spinner so it's probably about right for me. I don't need to prep the whole fleece & then have a marathon of spinning, I can just comb a little, spin it, then comb more as I like.

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Fleece adventure!

I had our housemate pull one out of the closet at random, so this is the one I'll work on first. It looks pretty nice, although it's less all-one-piece-y than I think is supposed to be ideal.

Now to watch yt videos on skirting & washing, and plan a method!

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Staple length looks like somewhere between 2 & 3 inches, and somewhat variable. I wonder if I should try to sort it into piles of long vs short, & then process & spin them separately. That sounds tedious.