Long Wool Fiber Study, part 2

I’ve never processed wool from a fleece. Freshly cut, or sheared, sheep wool is full of grass, oils, dirt, and other things we don’t want to talk about.

For the long wool fiber study I’m currently working on, I have some Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) in the grease shown below. I thought to spin it in the grease just so I’d know what that was like. I’d already spun samples of rinsed but not scoured fiber and it wasn’t too bad.

But in the grease means In The Grease! As I started to separate locks in preparation for flicking them open to spin as is, it smelled bad. Not awful, just a basic animal smell. But not something I wanted in my home. Or on my spinning wheel. I realized that I would have to scoured these locks prior to carding or flicking. They were so dirty.

The fleece had been properly skirted (meaning the super dirty and waste clumped areas removed) prior to me getting it. But it was still sticky with oil and dirt.

On the left, I have separated the BFL locks, aligned them cut ends together. The pile on the right are the sunburnt tips of each lock. Really kind of yucky, sticky fiber knots that broke off as I pulled on the tip. I had heard there might be broken bits that needed to be removed.

Then I packaged the fiber into tulle net. This method should keep the locks aligned properly and let the water flow easily in the bath.

Hot water and Dawn dish soap. This is the 2nd tub of water. Still grey. I forgot to take a picture of the first tub. It had turned brown and yucky immediately after submerging the tulle wrapped fiber.

The locks moved and shifted in the soft tulle. I need to use stiffer netting and more pins to help the locks stay in place.

The picture shows less than 1 oz. of fiber drying after 2 hours of work. The fibers are clean, soft and ready to card or flick for spinning. Top row is California Variegated Mutant (CVM) Romney mix. Bottom two rows are the BFL.

What I really liked about handling each individual lock was the ability to see the curls or crimp, to imagine how the lock grew on the animal, and see it’s springy-ness. Even the kind of vegetable matter I found in the raw fiber was interesting. I’ve always spun from clean roving. It was fun to start from the actual unwashed lock.

However, having spent 2 hours working with only 1 oz of fiber, I can’t imagine how long it would take to wash a whole multi-pound fleece.