Fleeces and Intrigue

Our post office is only open after 5 one day a week.  It can be difficult getting packages through this time of quarantine because the landlords work schedule is usually 4:30 but also includes if you are working a problem, finish it, then you are done.  Occasionally, that means that work is later than 4:30.  Sometimes that means that picking up packages while the post office is still open can be dicey.  As it was last week.  I have knwn my fleece from Aspen Grove Farms was here for a week.

Yesterday, It came home!

   I pulled out a lock and opened it up, just to see how it really was.  It was breathtaking.  Even raw!  The first photo is in daylight and the second under flash, so you can see what really is, and then, the clarity that the flash gives each strand of fibre.

I washed this lock using the method that Margaret Stove uses on her Spinning for Lace video class.  There, she washed one lock at a time, rather brutally, with a bar of soap and a bowl of hot water.  I washed this one in the bathroom sink in one dip wash and one dip rinse.

Isn't that pretty?  Sigh.  

Still it is a whole large fleece.  Many, many locks. I am going to wash it differently than I did the last fleeces.  This one is strikingly clean, very oily,  but clean of all but a little bit of straw.  Because of the long long locks, it is going to be easy picking it apart to wash it lock by lock but I think that is what I want from this fibre.  And I think I am going to wash it as I am ready to spin it, as Magaret Stove does.  That way, there will be no day when I have to face billions of years of combing. Prepping just enough session by session might be the way to go.

Today is not going to be the day to start this.  I must finish what I have on my wheel.  I have to sit down and do the footman repair the S51 has needed for months so I can get the backlog of spun singles plyed. (Or maybe not.  They are all on spare bobbins and could stay there.)  

I also would kind of like to spin the vary large bag of carded fibre from last years fleece so I can spin it all up and knit it into something. 

Though there is lots of interest in working with the new, I still feel enamoured of the challenge from that last fleece.  The large large bags of clouds of batts is calling to me.  I have no idea what it is yet and that interests me.  I know what I would like from it, but the yarn really makes that final decision.  The idea that something I have spent so much time on, remains so completely unknown intrigues me.

So lots to do today.  There will be time for spinning.  There will be time for knitting.  There will be time for whatever the day is going to be. I like that.