Fun with fleece

So, if you remember from my last post, I bought 5 lbs of raw Romney wool off of Craigslist. Last week, I separated the fleece into five piles, approx 1 lb each. This weekend I washed 2 lbs. of it, using lingerie bags and our washing machine. This is actually the dirtiest two sections of the fleece. I figure I can practice on this and save the good stuff for last. :)

I flicked the tips before putting them in the bags, because during a test run of 1 lb. last weekend, the tips didn’t seem to wash well.

To wash, I let it soak for 30 minutes in hot water and Dawn dishwashing detergent in my washing machine, spun it dry, then did it again. To rinse, I soaked it for 20 minutes in plain warm water, spun it dry, then did it again.

After all the water was spun out, I took it upstairs and laid it out on a sweater drying rack. The picture only shows a pound (well, less now that the dirt and lanolin is washed out). The other bundle is drying in a kid’s toy net hanging under my table.

The fleece got a really nice white, though some of the tips are a little yellow. That should blend fine when it’s carded, as the wool itself is undamaged. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to dye this batch or just try spinning it undyed. We’ll see!

I’ve gone off the deep end

Well, as if all this spinning and knitting isn’t enough, I decided I’m going to try processing some raw fleece. I know, what’s wrong with me? I can barely keep up with the hobbies I have!

Anyway, I scored about 5 lbs of very clean Romney fleece this week on Craigslist. The sheep’s name is Valerie, and the fleece was taken this year. It was covered, so veggie matter is minimal, and already skirted and sorted. It looks like it’ll be a lovely creamy white after it’s clean.

Speaking of cleaning, that’s next. That’ll be an adventure as well. It has a lot of lanolin in it, so it smells very sheepy! After I wash it, I’ll need to card it, and spin. I might try dyeing some of it too. Wish me luck!

Yikes

A forum I’m on held a craft kit thingy, where we were challenged to take items from a kit and turn them into something. The kit was kind of geared towards papercrafters, which I’m not, so I decided to do something with fiber. Meet FestOoned!

This gaudy monstrosity started out as some Corriedale wool top, which I spun with fabric bits from the kit into a bulky art yarn. I knit it into a tube to fit around a glass vase I had, and fastened more kit bits to it. There were fabric flowers in the kit, so I turned them into… flowers!

This was a swap, so I foisted it off on someone else, and in return, someone sent me theirs. I got crabs! Aren’t they cute?

At the beach

So, we went on a day trip to the beach yesterday, and I managed to take a few passable photos. No, I haven’t finished processing my Disneyland photos yet. These will have to do.

A few more here.

Well, this barks.

As you might have noticed, this isn’t Windows Live Spaces anymore. Spaces is being put out if its misery, which is really no surprise since they weren’t really enhancing it much and were actually starting to take features away (statistics, I’m looking at you). They did allow export to WordPress, which is why I’m here now.

Unfortunately, while I saved off my posts, that apparently didn’t save anything else, so my old sidebar links are gone. I didn’t have the foresight to at least do a screen capture of the old screen so I could reassemble it here, so please excuse the dust while I try to salvage what I can.

WordPress is, at least, a more full-featured blog service. I just need to get used to it.