Spent all day yesterday and the day before washing my newly acquired fleeces. It took me a long time, partly because it was the first time I’ve cleaned a fleece. They were much dirtier that they looked before they went in the water, I had to wash them three times and rinse them repeatedly. Now I know (if I get a chance to acquire a fleece for free) there is no such thing as a free fleece. I was lucky the weather was beautiful so it could be dried outside! Out of 6 lbs of fleece I got 4 lbs. washed this weekend.
Buddy the "sheepdog" guarding the drying fleece.
Buddy really loved the raw wool before it was washed, he wanted to roll in it and then take a nap on it. He thought the smell was absolutely divine.
Jacob and Romney fleece drying overnight in studio.
I did spin a small amount just to see what it would look like, it was easy to spin and looked pretty good. Now I have to figure out the best way to process the wool.
I did quite a bit of spinning over the weekend too: this is a pic of the yarn I spun.
It looks pretty good if you don’t undo the skein. Then you can see it’s a little overspun. Also finally finished a shawl I’ve been working on for a while, I had to rip it at least halfway out because of mistakes in the last part of the design. The pattern is by The Spun Monkey.
I have been knitting and crocheting leaves to embellish the top of the shawl, not sure how that will actually look, and will need lots more leaves.
More later!
