#scouring

First fleece washing:

This chocolate corriedale was 1.6kg, low VM but very dusty. Approx 160mm staple length and strong. Maybe 23-26 micron? Weathered tips.

5x cold rinses, 1x cold scour, 3x hot scour (up to 90 degrees) and cold rinse again

It's not greasy at all! And stayed well structured too. I'm flicking out tops and tails of the locks with the carders, and tbh they're ready to spin. Higher wastage than hand picking the locks open, but significantly improved quality of spinning fibre

The jellybean was in love with the fleece in the big plastic bag, she curled up and made a nest inside:

Also carded some of the picked dark grey merino cross. 45 rolags look very pleasing together

25-11-2023, part one:

I got my first whole fleece! It's from a Walliser Schwarznase (Walliser Blacknose). I already got rid of all the dirty and matted parts (pictured is the whole fleece before cleaning), and I took the very dirty edges off to do an experiment on cleaning.

The length of the fibers is +- 10 cm and the locks are very soft. There is quite a bit of vegetable matter, but I think that's to be expected. Look at those curls though! So pretty! I'm thinking about keeping some locks to use as texture while spinning.

Currently I'm scouring some of the dirty sides in warm water and dish soap, to see if they can be used for a test spin. A lot of brown water has been discarded already, so it looks to be cleaning up nicely. I hope it won't mat :)

The rest of the fleece has been rolled up in an old blanket and stored for now, untill the test spin has been done.

Now I have to see if I can borrow a carder from someone (or hand cards), so I can try to spin some up! (Once it is clean and dry, that is). Goal will probably be to spin a sweather out of this.

Updates wil follow in the next days/weeks! I'm very excited :D

Here is a Jacob fleece that I picked up for the sole purpose of seeing if I could spin each color in the coat separately, then weave it back together into something with both colors. I took lots of video of the washing process but Tumblr mobile is a nightmare so I'm going to have the stick with stills.

The first step was separating the black and white sections from each other. I couldn't remember if the fleece had been skirted (had all the really horrible bits and poop removed) because I bought it in a novelty-induced dopamine haze, but it turns out it was! So that was lucky. I ended up having a lot of locks that were both black and white, so I made a third pile of mixed locks that I didn't feel like separating further.

Next was the washing/scouring, which I did in a plastic tub in my backyard. The fleece wasn't incredibly dirty but still immediately released a bunch of brown muck in the water when I submerged it.

Wet fleece!!

I did two 20-minute soaks with the hottest tap water I could get and Power Scour (I actually have more of that than Dawn dish soap in my house rn), then a 20 minute rinse soak in hot water. I spun it out and laid it out to dry on this nifty herb drying rack thing.

It was dry enough to work with today and I couldn't resist combing out some of each color. I think it looks pretty neat!

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 👀

Scouring is the process of cleaning natural fibers before dyeing. This removes all grime, oils, and dirt as well as any grease that may inhibit the fiber from absorbing the natural dyes. This step is done before mordanting or naturally dyeing fiber, yarns, or fabrics.

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[THERE’S A KNOCKING ON A DOOR.]ARCHIVIST (CONT’D)Yes?