Unfolding the fleece.... 
Oh, dear gods! What's that SMELL? 
A whole fleece, as advertised.
How do sheep get dingleberries in the middle? That makes no sense....
That's how I feel about Corona.
Dunk wool in hot water and detergent. Pray the felt gods aren't watching.
Extra Degreasing Action in action
All Done. The fleece is beige no more.
Ok, so Dominic realizes that I have some weird hobbies, and
that many of them seem to involve a weird level of enthusiasm for wool. He doesn't
really understand why I'm so into the things I'm into, but he loves me and is
extremely supportive.
Last sunday, he went to a little midieval faire in northern WI with a bunch
of friends. I was in southern WI, giving a FoF class on costuming. On monday
he called me to tell me how much he'd missed me while he was there, and that
he'd gotten me something and hoped I didn't think it was stupid. What? A fleece!
Cool. "Straight off the sheep!" he added, enthusiastically.
*PAUSE*
"Straight off the sheep?" I asked.
"Yep!"
"Has it been cleaned?"
"I don't know. How would I be able to tell?"
"Does it *smell* like a sheep?"
He assured me that it smelled fine and looked pretty.
As it turns out, he fell for the classic "everything in burlap smells pleasantly of burlap for at least 3 days" ploy. Around wednesday, he tells me online that he thinks maybe he was wrong, because it is starting to smell a little sheepy in the general area of the sack full of wool. And the cats love the sack. The cats reeeeealy looooooooove the sack.
I saw it on saturday. I pronounced it unwashed within feet.
Now, I've never had to wash wool before. I understand that hot water, detergent, and wool makes wool clean. But that's also the recipe for felt, so that's a bit of a puzzler. Dominic, for his part, was amazed that you can't just chuck a fleece into a washer and expect clean fleece, ready to spin, to come out. (He did offer to clean it. He just thought it would be easy.) But I looked a bunch of stuff up online, determined that the SCA folks believe that wool felts if you breathe on it on a humid day, while people who raise sheep general agree that it takes a bit more than that. So, armed with my newfound internet knowledge (and a backup plan involving felted boots), I set out to clean the fleece sunday morning. I'd read that this could be done with the aid of a washing machine, so long as you never let it agitate, but I think that if you're going to do something by hand, they you should darned well do it by hand.
The first trick was getting the fleece out of the burlap sack. This was accomplished by turning the sack inside out around the wool, while shouting "No, don't *pull* it!" to Dominic. The fleece, unfolded, took up the entirity of the picnic table in his backyard and was, as advertized, a whole fleece straight off the sheep. That's about when we realized that most of the smell was inside the folded fleece. And I looked at Dominic and said, "Well, this really is fresh off the sheep, sweetie." "How do you know?" "The dingleberries haven't dried out." (Eeeewwww! Ick! Yucky! Gross! Deeeees-gusting.) We left the fleece to air for a bit.
Now, I'd read that the first step to cleaning a raw fleece is "skirting" -- removal of the "less desirable" bits from the edge of the fleece. It's hard, looking at (or smelling) raw fleece to find any one bit immediately less desirable than all the other bits. Other than a lovely golden beige color, there was nothing lovely about the fleece. (And we'll talk about that color in just a minute.) I made an executive decision that "less desirable" meant anything that was truly unusable or repulsive -- already felted bits (I guess sheep do shrink up in the rain!), or bits hosting dingleberries. Those bits were left for outside cats to nest in, or any birdies who wanted felt-lined nests.
After that, it's mostly a lather-rinse-repeat process. I had two wash tubs. Dominic kindly connected the hot water to the outside hose. I used the new and improved Dawn extra degreaser with automatic foaming action (does that sound like an action figure to anyone else?). Hunks of lovely golden beige fleece go in to sudsy water. Water immediately turns yellowish brown. I will leave it to you to look up the definition of "suint". I'm sure you can guess what else made that lovely golden beige color.
After two washings, rinsings, and wringings, it turned out that I had *white* wool, with sections of grey or black hairs, and the off taupe colored tip. Mostly white, though. (Quite unfortunately, Dominic bought this particular fleece for it's lovely color.).
There are a couple lessons to be learned here:
1) There's a damn lot of wool in a fleece. I mean, a *damn* *lot* of wool.
2) All of it starts out smelling really bad.
3) While you might think that, for all practical purposes, you could find the ass end of the sheep by looking for the dingleberries, it turns out that sheep get these *all*over*. I mean, in the middle? I can only assume that sheep lack a normal colon and are forced to eliminate solid waste through their skin.
4) The smell of raw fleece might just be enough to cure a person of their do-it-yourself urges.
5) Having had a chance to ponder what, exactly, makes a fleece go golden, I now totally don't get that whole Jason and the Argonauts thing. If you find a golden fleece, you've not found some new, rare, valuable breed. You've found an incontinent sheep.
6) Those people who say that sheep are "really quite clean animals" must be dog people. I am a cat people. Cats are relatively clean animals. Sheep are not.
7) Clean is better than fresh when it comes to fleece.
8) While washing fleece isn't difficult, it's hard, backbreaking labor and requires a lot of really hot water. No need to worry about your hands with all that hot water and dish soap, though, because wool has enough lanolin that it's more like getting a parafin treatment.
9) Speaking of your hands, the odor will linger a bit there.
10) I was blessed with a strong stomach and a weak sense of smell. I credit my peasant ancestry for this.
11) No matter how much you love your girlfriend, after a few hours of washing fleece she will still start to question just why a stinky, greasy, hairy mess in a burlap sack made you think of her.
12) If you still decide to buy your sweetie a raw fleece, you should not do it while she's frantically sewing commissions.
Now, all I have to do is figure out what, exactly, I do with the nice fluffy white fleece I have now.... I think carding or combing come into this somewhere. Stay tuned, gentle readers, for the continuing battle for clean fleece.
