Fleeced!

The first of many fleeces (from my terrible ebay fleece bender last week) arrived yesterday.

First of all, P.U.! They weren’t kidding about the stink! I kept reading about how stinky raw fleece is, but my only experience was with the alpaca I bought from a local ranch, and it only had sort of a relatively clean animal smell, like a dog a week or so after a bath. Sheep, on the other hand, really stink it up.

And greasy? Man! Totally clumped together with grease. When I wash the whole thing, I’ll dump it out as one big fleece and spread it all out. I want to see it all spread out like a rug! The grease, togehter with the meshiness of it, kind of keeps it all together in one big pelt. But I know if I dump it all out, I’ll get all excited and want to wash it all, and I just don’t have time.

Now, I’m not allowed to do any spinning or knitting until I’m finished with my real work, so my brand new Louet S17 kit (also arrived yesterday) is just languishing in the corner, along with the 16 colors (!) of dyed corriedale, plus 10 colors of dye from Dharma trading, and the half a dozen types of undyed top that arrived from Hello Yarn last week. (I did give the spindle and nostepinde a whirl, however). The one thing that didn’t arrive is the drum carder, which is backordered. I’m actually thankful it didn’t come, because it would be just way too tempting to resist.

But I couldn’t resist washing up a little bit of my new fleece, to get an idea of whether it was a great decision, or the worst decision ever.

The answer? Great decision! At least, based on this fleece. And of course, even that’s a sketchy analysis, since I haven’t dyed or carded it yet, but still!

Okay, here’s before:

Stinky, yellow, filthy. I picked out the big vegetable matter. I started flicking the really filthy tips with a dog brush, but then I thought I may as well give it a whirl without spending too much time on it first.

So I washed it thusly: soaked twice in hot water (Next time, I’ll take a picture, the dirt just billows out), then in hot, soapy water, then in hot water again. Then spun in the dryer.

And, ta da! Springy and fluffy wuffy and a pretty, natural white. It lost about 1/3 of its weight in grease.

There’s still some VM (look at me, saying VM!), but it really does seem to shake right out. so I think the rest of it really will fall out with carding and spinning (another thing I keep reading but didn’t believe).