#raw fleece

This is a border Leicester Ram fleece I was gifted by a teacher from my wool classing course last year.

Lots of second cuts and some VM, low dust and low lanolin. The yellow colour mostly came out in the first cold rinse, surpringsly. I think it's around 1-1.2kg, I didn't bother weighing.

Ideally the lock structure will be maintained enough to have options, I like the Scandinavian(?) style of felting the ends of locks onto garments like this:

Source I think?

go fiber fest buy big bag of scrumptious raw fleece n then wash it n hand process it (hand comb/hand card) n spin into yarn n make delectable sweater out of it

want cormo n if cormo then card into rolag if buy another leicester long wool or really shiny wool then buy hand comb too

had (still have maybe 1/3 1/4 of less good parts unprocessed) really extreme good quality leicester long wool LAMB wool!!! lamb wool!!!!!!!!! SHINY!!!! n so shorter staple length n scared of hand comb sharp so got hand carder (but realize hand carder sharp poky too bad motor skill get blood) but so bad at hand card n made lots neps. n really wanted preserve shiny quality but not realize worsted vs woolen prep give result different THAT MUCH. so now leave with woolen n bit uneven lace/light fingering yarn that not that impressively shiny n still lanoliny… too thin be knit one strand but worry not have enough for sweater if hold 2 together bc not want ruin rest of fleece so not touch it. it still usable but feel like ruined so good fleece. n now that project be on pause for months n rn 2 am randomly sulking abt it n want fiber art friends pat me on head tell me it all okay 😢

I had a new experiment idea!

What kind of affect has the cleaning method for raw wool on the finsihed yarn (softness, look, cleanness)

Before and after cleaning with dish detergent!

Spinning was a bit bumpy, because I didn't do any prepping

But 4,2 m on 0.21, not too bad (also very proud of the thinness)

I'll try:

scouring with potash

Suit fermentation (in tab water and destilled water)

Power scour from unicorn fiber

Plant based sapoids (chestnuts)

Store bought detergents (woolwash or dischsoap)

I bought 500g of raw Merino fleece so I can use 100g for each method (suit fermentation and store bought detergents 50g each)

I want to know how much water I need, how much energy, how much of a pain in the ass is the process, how lanolin free is the fiber after... (Any more questions I should get into? Let me know! How far friendly is it, listen I KNOW from my research that the suit method will be a PvP against my neighbors, but I need to smell for myself)

I'll dukument everything and maybe I'll write a article for my guilds magazine 👀

an attempt at dyeing 2 ounces (60 grams) of the white jacob fleece with some very overgrown thyme in my front yard. i cooked the thyme in salt water for a few hours and drained it.

disclaimer: i have never dyed with thyme and couldn't find any info on it other than the color it makes (yellows and greens), so there might be a much better way to work with this specific material, but in the absence of more information, i just did my usual thing !

the wool was still a little greasy for easy spinning, so i washed it quickly in dish soap. then i cooked the wool in a water, vinegar and copper mordant solution for another 45 minutes, removed most of the mordant solution and added in all the dye. i then cooked it for another few hours, until there was very little color in the water (about half an hour after i took the second to last photo). then i removed the wool, rinsed throughly, and let it dry.

I'm not sure if the fact that this is old thyme that's been out in the snow and rain all winter has affected the color, so i definitely want to try this again in the summer and see what color i get.

washing the wool one more time also definitely got rid of most of the grease, and it's kind of rough now. so it was a good call to wash the fleece the way i did and keep it nice and soft.

i also did very little fleece with a lot of dye material, so either it's a very weak dyestuff or else the age of the thyme affected the strength as well.

wife: can’t we just get more storage containers for more wool

me: ...