#wool washing

[ezekiellsplayground]

Wool washing day was a whole afternoon affair. This is my 700 grams of merino suffolk cross from Scotts Creek Farm in NSW, Australia.

First pic is the wool in the second bath with dirt water from the initial bath in the other bucket. Next pictures are from halfway through the soap baths and the last soap bath where the water is pretty clear showing no more dirt or lanolin is being drawn from the wool.

I like to dry my locks on a herb dryer I got from amazon. Once completely dry (which took a few days in Aussie summer) I was rewarded with lovely fluffy wool, with a tight, springy crimp. Don’t worry about the dirt on the lock ends, it’s been fried from the washing and will fall right out during the next processing stage.

[milkweedman]

Impossible to photograph this massive fleece without cats all over it. Look how big though !! Might be the biggest I've ever worked with.

[saltpixiefibercraft]

Fleece prep begins!!

[comfortabletextiles]

Selfcare after a anxiety/panik attack is washing raw wool and listening to Jane austen 😌

Loreley: "I am helpful! Supervising my hooman!"

[ezekiellsplayground]

The first load of fleece (about 1/3rd) has been washed. Lanolin dissolves in water thats 60C, but wool doesn’t like hot temperature or sudden temperature changes otherwise it’ll felt. So it’s important to keep the water hot across the baths & to only gently paddle the wool to encourage lanolin/urine/sweat/dirt/etc to come out with the soap. There is 1-2 rinse baths after the scour baths, which isn’t shown, just to get any remaining soap out.

[milkweedman]

Washing the very exciting clun forest × shetland cross fleece I got this winter (for 10 whole dollars btw. 2 pounds of fleece !). It's going weirdly. Usually the fleece clumps a bit and wants to hold onto itself but this one is just tearing apart. It's drying right now, and I only washed half, so we'll see. Can't wait to try it out tho.

[milkweedman]

Lots of fleece things recently; trying not to move with old dye or raw fleeces so I've been using stuff up. Also I always get into a fleece fever in the spring

From top to bottom, left to right:

Shetland scrap (as in, my last little bit of that beautiful fleece) after avocado dye with copper mordant, drying. Happy to add some light pink to my naturally dyed shetland collection. I've got some updates for that too but I'll wait until I've spun all of the different colors probably.

Hampshire fleece in the avocado exhaust. I'm using some old bottled avocado dye from last year plus the bits of avocados I had from recently. It's still a very dark dyebath so I oughta be able to get at least another round of full dye before actually getting exhaust. I forgot how crazy potent the avocado dye was (cooked it down from about 1 gallon to a pint which is about 80% less volume if my completely wild guess is correct). Oops.

White: shetland x clun forest, drying. The green is more hampshire that I mordanted quite some time ago, forgot about, and recently found. I believe its copper mordant because it was very green already, but after dyeing with yellow hollyhock and yellow marigold it is even greener. I know it looks vaguely brown here, but it's a sort of khaki green

And then more shetland x clun forest. This is the first batch; I moved it to the bathroom drawer that's directly over a vent and thus very good for drying things. It's still wet though. The hampshire is dry already and I dyed it at the same time.... I'm chalking it up to more weirdness from this crossbreed sheep. I want it to dry already so I can sample some and see if it spins up weird too. I hope it's good as a yarn. The lack of stickiness in the fibers is really odd for what the parents were... kinda reminds me of karakul ? Idk, I'm sure it will be a little easier when it's dry.

[milkweedman]

I am now washing my last raw fleece ! its the remaining half of the hampshire I bought last year. Man, its gross. I wonder if this part has some canary stains and wool rot...it looks pretty suspicious but I'll wash it and see.

So far this last week or so I've washed 1 jacob lambsfleece, 1 shetland/clun forest fleece, 1 massive shetland moorit fleece...about 10 pounds total. Also dyed several pieces of fleece. Was nervous about the jacob because its so fine and was so lanoliny, i was worried i might felt it or harsh it. but nope ! beautiful.

Of course I already have projects to work on, so I just put these all in bags and hung them on the wall.