Wool wool everywhere

Lucy insists that I have farm animals hidden somewhere. Every time I empty out a bag of wool Lucy runs over to investigates the pile of pungent fleece till she's satisfied that there's nothing to worry about. Each and every morning on her walk to the back door she has to stop and smell the remaining bags of unwashed wool in the laundry room. I give out a little Baa baa, she gives me a sideways look and walks away.

I've been in a mad dash to get all my raw wool washed and dried before my big trip. I'm afraid that if I wait till I get back the weather will have turned cold and I won't be able to wash and dry a fleece in a day and a half. Out of the 7 bags of wool I am in the process of washing bag number 5. This seems like a never ending job. Each bag of wool is washed two times in Dawn dish washing soap and then rinsed. For the first wash I let the wool soak overnight. I drain the water and stick the wool in the washer to spin it dry. While this batch is in the washer I am filling up a bucket in the sink of equal temperature water that I just pulled the wool out off so as not to shock the wool; which I think is what I did with some of the first batch. Due that error, I now wash my wool in smaller batches, less chance of screwing up a lot of wool.

So while the water is filling up in the sink, the washer is spinning the wool drying I'm on the patio draining the next bucket of wool. I run back inside turn off my water bring it outside fill up bucket #1, I carry the bucket and my wet wool inside. Turn on the water again to fill up the pail again, go to the washer pull out the dry wool, put in the wet wool, bring the wet wool out to the bucket to soak and start all over again. - If that makes any sense. It's just a little game I play with myself. The bucket filling with water is my stopwatch. I have 4 buckets on the patio that I'm washing wool in and each on takes at least 2 pails to fill it full.

Then I'm onto drying the wool, I'm trying to keep all my wool separate. I went out to the thrift store the other day to get some pillowcases to store all this clean wool in. I have pillowcases but I don't know where the hell they are. My life is still backed up in boxes and I'm living with the bare minimum. So I splurged on seven .79 cent  pillowcases. I've labeled the pillowcases so I'll know what I'm working with. The five different fleece I've cleaned are all so vastly different.

I love the long strands of variegated grey, brown,with its bits of black of Bag 2.

 Bag 3 is this long fluffy silvery fiber

Bag 4 is this lovely cream color that has a lot of crimp to it.

 Bag 5 has these lovely little curls, the strands are quite long as well. I can't wait to use this. I'm planning on doing some spinning with some of these curls popping out of the yarn.  I can already visualize this fleece dyed in all sorts of different colors.

Yesterday I decided to dye some more wool. I have had a jar of avocado peels soaking in water which I've been curious to try, so I added a handful of wool to this jar. I added some more wool to the black walnut dye bath that I've had sitting around. Finally I mixed up some dark blue jean dye and a tropical green dye. I soaked as much wool as I could get in my pans of color. The directions said to let the wool soak for an hour. I did that, pulled the wool after that hour and let it soak in clean water. I still had these 2 pans full of color so I stuck in more wool. I let this batch soak for 2 hours. There doesn't seem to be a difference in color between the 2 batches. As a little test I soaked some wool in the blue and then put it in the green, I did end up getting a nice teal green. I poured all the color left over into jars so I could dye some of yarn once I get it spun. I did notice that my avocado didn't seem to color my wool. The black walnut that I've used on 3 different batches, has a yet a different color.

I soaked all my dyed wool in clean water and hung it out to dry. The colors are green in the back row for those who are color blind, the middle row - left to right - Avocado, teal green, black walnut, the first row is the dark blue jean.

I'm really enjoying spinning the variegated grey fiber. I can get the yarn super thin or make it chunky and thick. I also have the option of using grey or brown or even pulling in clumps of black to change the look of the yarn.