Next Please

It's a bit of a production line with fleece here at the moment. I've just put a couple of hundred grams of Corriedale fleece to soak in the laundry tub:If I drain it off this evening, then add the soap and soak it again overnight it will be ready to rinse tomorrow morning. That gives me 24 hours for it to dry before Friday, when I hope to have a good spinning day--forecast for 21 degrees and no appointments at this stage. As soon as the laundry tub's free I've got some different fleeces waiting for their turn.

Meanwhile the merino sample I finished yesterday is dry; I have about 80g of English Leicester wool ready to flick out and there's another Corriedale sample on my needles--it's a swatch I didn't do at the time I did the spinning.

Today's not much of a day for spinning. It's quite hot already and in any case I need to head out in just over half an hour. Perhaps I'll have time to finish knitting that swatch.

Drying Rack

Here's a worm's eye view of my shower recess:. . . maybe that should be a daddy-long-legs' view. I don't have worms in my bathroom, but I do get the occasional spider.

I built a drying rack over the top of the bath and shower some years ago--part of my getting used to a climate in which clothes don't just dry on the line outside in a few hours! Now there's usually a skein or two or three of fibre hanging there. My friends are often amused when they go to use the bathroom, it's often messy, but never boring.

Today it's a batch of merino wool which I washed yesterday. The fleece is sandwiched between layers of gutter guard--a fine plastic mesh. The edges are tied down, so the fleece won't move while I wash and rinse it. I left it in the laundry tub to drain overnight. The forecast for today is 36, so I'm expecting it will be dry by tomorrow. I'm hoping for a cooler day tomorrow, so I'll have lovely clean dry fleece ready to spin.

Fleece, Fleece and More Fleece

Uh Oh! I think it's multiplying! The fleece, that is. This is a pic of a corner of my table:The rest of the table has other things on it: paperwork, dyed tops, tools of various kinds and even a little bit of free space.

This pile is the small bags of fleece I've bought for my Certificate Spinning course. We've been learning different spinning techniques in each class. Each technique is best done with a different fleece type. Starting next class we're going to be looking at different fibres--that means fibres other than wool. So I've got two different types of alpaca and some mohair as well.

My first challenge is to keep it all straight in my head. I'm learning to identify the different fleece types, but for now I'm also making sure that I label each bag. My next challenge is to wash it all. The wool needs to be scoured to get rid of the lanolin as well as any dirt--and you can see there's a lot of dirt in some of the fleeces. The alpaca is best washed with shampoo or wool wash, since it doesn't have any grease, but it has lots of dust in it. And I need to be absolutely brutal with the mohair--apparently the dishwashing detergent I use for my wool won't budge the "greasy goat" residue that is in this fibre. It may be a luxury fibre after it's prepared, but until then I've been told to wash it in "handy andy" or "white king"--stuff I'd normally associate with cleaning the bathroom!

So, today while I get on with the damask weaving, I'll be doing some washing.

Washing Day

I've got a busy weekend coming up at the Guild. Today I'm working to get everything prepared. That means catching up with my weaving homework and washing fleece ready for Sunday's spinning classes.

We're working on worsted spinning using three different fleeces: a Merino, a Corriedale and an English Leicester. Because it's worsted spinning, I want to keep my wool as tidy as possible while I wash it. That way I can preserve the lock formation and keep the fibres all parallel. I need to have scoured fleece to go through the wool combs. I've tried using Gutter Guard (or gutter mesh) once before and was really pleased with the result:

• washed fleece at the front, all ready to comb
• behind it, some fleece still in it's mesh sandwich
• and a new roll of Gutter Mesh--from the cheap shop, because I'm going to need lots and I don't see the point of paying full price:)

Washing fleece is one of those jobs that can't be rushed. I put it to soak in hot water yesterday morning. This morning I started by draining that off, then soaked it in hot water and detergent. Then a couple of rinses and now it's on the line drying--still in it's mesh sandwich. I'm hoping it will dry happily, despite the stormy wet weather we've been having. By the way, if you're worrying about the hot water, it's ok--I mean hot to touch, not hot-hot and remember, the fleece isn't moving around. Meanwhile, back to my weaving.

Reverse Psychology

This is the front of the bag in which I've been keeping the Cockatoo Quilt: I made it the day I washed my first fleece. It's a crazy bag and I made it by crazy process of reverse psychology . . .

I'd been warned to prevent felting when I washed my fleece. I'd read that temperature changes and agitation were the main things to avoid. So I was very, very careful. I used lukewarm water to soak the fleece overnight; I handled it gently, and all the time I was anxiously looking out for any signs of felting--not that I really knew what to look out for. By the next afternoon I had a clean, unfelted fleece and a body full of anxious energy.

With the washing safely out of the way, I decided to give vent to some of my pent up energy. I took a few handfuls of fleece and determined to find out what I would need to do to make it felt. I let myself loose on that fleece for an hour or so.

• I lathered it with soap,
• I poured boiling water on it,
• I rubbed it and scrubbed it

. . . I treated it as badly as I knew how . . . and still it hardly felted. But I did feel better. Then I spread the wool roughly over a rectangle of gold coloured fabric, I added scraps of silk and stitched it all down with variegated cotton thread. Another piece of fabric and a ribbon handle and there was my crazy bag. I'm more confident handling fleeces now, but the crazy bag is still lots of fun.