This is the way we wash the fleece

I bought many exciting toys at Woolfest this weekend but the ones that I am most eager to play with are my new, highly lethal (at least in appearance) wool combs.



Although these look like a medieval instrument of torture they are in fact used to turn this:



into this:



which can be spun into this:



[world's tiniest skein of yarn]


Unfortunately before I can start playing with my combs I have to wash and dry at least one of my fleeces. When I emailed my husband to let him know that I would be coming home from Woolfest with not one but two fleeces he said that was fine, his only stipulations were that I should wash them on a fine day and when he wasn't around. Since the sun was out today and he was at work it seemed like an ideal day for prepping the Gotland fleece.

First I spread it out on the lawn to pick out the mucky bits:



I'd usually refer to this as skirting but since it was impossible to see where the skirts of the fleece were it's not really appropriate in this case.



It's a lovely fleece I think, mostly silver coloured locks with a few light brown and grey patches, and pretty clean. There were only a few locks that I had to discard.



I put the fleece through four or five changes of hot water with a little bit of liquid detergent in the first bucket with long soaks in between then spread it out to dry.



The rest of this half of the fleece should be dry by tomorrow and then I can start combing!

Whilst the fleece was soaking I was getting on with spinning and plying the Freyalyn's Fibres bfl from Woolfest. I wound the fibre from each spindle into a double ply Nostepinne ball and then plied it.



After plying I had just under 100 metres of a lovely 4 ply yarn and lots of fibre still to spin up. I should definitely have a decent amount of yarn for socks or mittens afterwards.