washing and processing a new fleece

 I've been washing fleeces.   This one is likely a BFL/Shetland cross.   It's about a 3-31/2 inch staple length.  There is a bit of VM, which is to be expected since the sheep are kept outside all the time.  The worst VM I've ever found came from sheep who were kept in a barn almost all the time.  It was just loaded to the point of almost being unusable, especially when combined with the excess lanolin produced from being sheltered all the time.   

This fleece was easily cleaned. I put portions of the fleece into lingerie bags. I used my laundry tub to soak, with no agitation for any of the soaks or washes.   I used a warm water soak to remove a lot of the actual dirt.  Then I used a hot water wash with Orvus paste and Zep degreaser, which removed most of the lanolin.  The second wash was just Orvus and a tiny squirt of Dawn dish soap in hot water.  It needed 2 or 3 soaks in decreasing temperatures of hot water.  As the water cooled down during the process, I used the next water bath at a similar water temperature as the previous one had as I drained it.   Since the two factors for felting wool are agitation and abrupt changes in temperature, this would hopefully stop that from happening.

I tried a batch in the drum carder, but didn't like the results.   The VM doesn't generally fall out in a drum carder, usually does when spinning.  What I had missed was that this fleece was a bit tippy, meaning the tips were weak and were either a bit felted or they just broke off when processing, and there was a bit of a short undercoat and some felted cut ends.  These caused a lot of neps to be formed in the drum carded batts.   I tried combing with Valkerie viking combs, which produced a stellar result but about 25% waste, which is pretty normal.  The problem that I found though was that required a lot of arm strength with the felted tips and cut ends.  I ended up flick carding the locks and turning them into rolags, which resulted in minimum waste and a lovely, spinnable rolag.  It's still a lot of work though.

I learned something.   I'd been taught early on that flick carders work best using a tapping motion to create static electricity, which opens the lock and lets the VM drop out.  This technique works exceptionally well, and doesn't take a lot of effort since it's just a gentle tap, tap that's needed.  However, this works until it doesn't.  With the weak tips and the bit of felting at the ends, that brushing that I've always warned people not to do, is totally required here.  The tips need more effort than the tapping allows for and the felting at the cut end, despite being really slight, doesn't respond at all to the tapping.  This means that I was tapping away and accomplishing absolutely nothing!  So I resulted to a mixture of brushing the tips and then tapping.   Takes more time and much more effort but I was able to get those beautiful rolags that I like to spin.   It's going to take me forever to process this fleece at this rate.

Now if only I had labelled the lingerie bags that I'd used to wash the 2 white fleeces in.   They are all the same bag, as in the same colour, the same size, the same everything and when filled with white fleece, yup, they look all the same.

What I did this weekend.....

I've been collecting all the leftover roving bits for ages now.  Some of the bits and pieces are leftover from my master spinner course.  Others have just accumulated over time.  Not all of them were really nice bits.  Even when properly stored, wool fibres can become somewhat compacted from time.  There can be temperature changes, humidity changes,  maybe some pressure from being stored in a bag or container and being squished a bit.   So some of the fibres were compacted, some were old, and there were a bunch that were in perfect condition.   I decided to dig out my blending board so that I had something to spin at the next spin in.   I will say that this is definitely a preparation where really nice, perfectly processed fibres work up so much nicer than a few of the compacted and neppy bits I ended up using

I had 3 shades of blue, 2 of which I'm pretty sure were dyed in an indigo vat and were probably leftover rovings that I tossed in to use up excess dye. There was some pale yellow, a rusty orange and a rusty red, some pinks, and purples, some green mohair locks which later became green roving when I realised I was sitting on it and some icicle nylon sparkly stuff.

I filled this basket full and forget to take a photo of the basket full of rolags.  It was quite impressive and very pretty.   It takes a lot longer than you'd think to fill a basket with blending board rolags.   I started just after lunch, took a 20 minute tea break to stretch, and then when I started running out of blue rovings, I realised it was 5 pm and time to start dinner. 

  I was getting 3 rolags from each loaded blending board.   I used to get 4, but decided to try one less.  The rolags were a bit larger and more substantial but not a single one broke or lost its structure.   I also didn't load quite so much on the board which made it a little easier to work with.

Since I'm running out of prepared roving in my stash, I was happy to have these to play with.   Spinning friends were quite complimentary about these.  I will say that the basket full was quite pretty.

Spinning the rolags was quite quick and pretty easy.   Except that this is where the quality of the fibre prep really shows.   Any of the areas of the rolags with the nicely prepared fibres were a dream to spin.   Hardly any effort was needed and they almost spun themselves.   The areas with the slightly compacted rovings, despite doing my best to loosen them up, require a bit of effort to get a reasonable bit of yarn.   In a few places, instead of being able to do the long draw, I had to do a short forward draw to get a consistent yarn.   There are a few bits that are uneven; even reversing the twist and trying to pull out the slub, didn't help.

Regardless, it was quite quick to spin.  I think because of the wide variety of fibres and the few that were compacted, it's a bit thicker than I'd planned.   It was just too difficult and not fun to spin any finer, so the plied yarn is about a worsted weight or maybe an aran weight yarn.  Not what I wanted, but it allowed me to chat with the girls while spinning the first bobbin- so there is that.

I'd been concerned that with the around of orange and rusty red in the mixture, that there was a high risk of getting a bit of undefined browns or greys in the finished yarn.   Not so though!  The yarn is manly dark blue, with smaller areas with the other colours showing through the barber pole effect of the plied yarn.   It's pretty enough, but after all that work, I really don't have that much yarn to work with for an end product.    If I'd made a finer yarn,  I was thinking about using it for a vertical stripe or stripes in a scarf.  It's really too thick for that I think, so maybe enough for a hat or save it for some rug hooking project.