Our grandmothers and great grandmothers, and anyone who ever took garments straight from sheep to shoulder deserves and awful lot of respect. If my grandma was still around, heck if my Auntie Lorraine was still around, I would kiss their feet to say thank you for letting me sleep under the wool quilt batts they made from fleeces from the farm down the road.

Its a big job and we modern lazy bones owe homage to their skill, their tenacity and their hard work for doing all this without running water, and septic systems.

The fleece washing went well. It was incredibly dirty stuff. I picked it over and put it in a big tub of water for a good soak.

Then I washed it using the hot water method. I put it in a pan with some Dawn and heated the water till the water was to hot to put my hands into. Then I rinsed it several times in clean very very hot water.

When it came out from the rinsing, it was so clean it was hard to believe that it was the same fibre that went into the soak. Its drying now upstairs though my intent was to dry it in the sun. the sun is not cooperating today. I'm going to put it in the same room with a small dehumidifier unit we have, to dry it fast. Using the dehumidifier, I expect it to be dry before days end.

There still is a lot of vegetable matter in it, and though some may come out when carding and combing, I think I might wash it again first. There is just is so much vegetable matter in there. Perhaps it is a combination of newbie sheep farmer (the fibre comes from a start up flock) and newbie fleece person, both not quite knowing what the heck we are doing, but game enough to try anything. and then again, it is possible that sheep fleeces are just really really dirty things.

I have a deep sense of satisfaction out of this. When I pulled the fibre out of the last rinse, gently squeeze out most of the water, and then lay it out to dry, I could not help it. I felt pretty darn good about my work. It nice seeing such a profound change from what went in at the start. I'd say it was enjoyable, but this was only the first half bag. The last half of bag one is waiting for me out back, after soaking over night. Well see if I still think it is enjoyable after I get the other three bags done.

The current plan is to do 2 bags the hot wash method, and 2 bags the cold wash method that is so much discussed on Ravelry and see which is more effective and which produces something I'd like to spin.

And somewhere in here over the next few days, I have to talk Mr. Needles into making me a comb with which to comb out the fibre. He doesn't know this yet (unless he reads my blog today) but he is quite skilled in finding solutions to the strange requests he gets from me. The how to is right here in case anyone else is interested and has, like me, an extremely talented handy person around.

Come Monday, I hope to have just a little more done and maybe a set of combs in hand. We'll see. It never hurts to dream.