Sunday, October 13, 2013

Skirting and washing sheep's wool


Ok, so I looked on Youtibe and jumped right in. I cannot seem to get someone to actually LET ME do anything with wool. Like carding or spinning. They want me to just watch. And I need to DO it. So I watched some videos and got the general idea.

I still have some fleeces from last spring. Plus 3 from this spring. So I took Lucinda's wool from the grain sack and started cleaning all the crap out of it. It wasn't too bad.

And got Adele's from this spring and cleaned all the crap I could find out of it.

Then washed Lucinda's wool. I don't have much room yet to dry. So just used my 2 picnic tables. Which worked great. It was a beautiful sunny day with a light breeze. So most of it's dry now.

To all you who do this all the time, how does this wool look to you? This is Lucinda's wool. She is full Finn. She's my ewe who died last year. I love her wool.




                                                            This is it on the table after skirting it.





                                         This is Adele's all spread out on the table to be skirted.



Adele is mostly Finn. Her wool was really long. First ever shearing for her, as a yearling.




Here is Lucinda's wool, washing. I still have a little bit to wash tomorrow. I used Dawn.


 

                                                And all spread out on the drying tables.







I need to go get it now. The sun is going down. But would really love some input. What do you think? Will it spin into nice yarn? That's next, after carding. Which I can do, but can't seem to get the hang of getting it off the carder in one nice piece to roll up. Practice,  practice, practice, right?

Let me know what you think please. I can take it. Really, I can. Being my very first time doing this, with no one to tell me if it's good wool or not, I think it looks good. I need to practice doing all this anyway.

4 comments:

Kristin said...

I'm waiting to hear responses too. It all looks beautiful!

Kristin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sandra said...

Kris, from the pictures it looks like you did a good job.

Just remember it is not rocket science! It can be intimidating, but it doesn't need to be.

All of it takes practice. I am still trying to stick to my goal of spinning. Making improvements!
Let us know how it goes with carding :)

Kris said...

Sandra, I was hoping you would see this. I'm glad to know you think it looks good. I will be doing a lot of practicing for sure! This is only the first bag.

Susan gave me a pound of dark brown Alpaca wool. It needs to be washed next. It's amazing! So I might mix the 2 fibers together when spinning. That's the part I am looking forward to the most.