Baa
So much to blog about, so little energy with which to do it. (Stupid allergies.) I'll try to post it all in installments, though I can't promise a cliffhanger at the end of each post.
First, spinning class! Our first class was on Thursday night, and I can tell already that it's going to be great. It's a small class, only about 10 people. We learned all sorts of useful things about how to choose a good fleece: pick one from a healthy sheep that's been wearing a coat all season (so you don't have to pick the weeds out), and check that it was shorn cleanly and doesn't have a lot of little bits where the shearer had to go back and cut more. Then we all sat down with some rather dirty and greasy fleece and learned how to card and spin it on a drop spindle. And then we each got our own bag of sticky sheep fluff to take home to wash, card, and spin (eventually).
I bought a nice plastic shopping basket at the hardware store, which is perfect for holding a lot of wool and has plenty of drainage in the bottom, so you can lift the fleece straight out of the water without risking agitation, which causes felting. I soaked the fleece in hot water and dishsoap for a long time, in several rinses, using gloves because it was very hot water. (The bathroom smelled a lot like a barn for a few hours.)
And eventually, I had a big pile of relatively-clean fleece! The color changes between the pictures are quite accurately represented - there was a lot of dirt in there. This was all done on Friday night, and it's still drying in the bathroom, but I didn't bother to spread it out very carefully since I didn't mind it taking a few days. The climate here is so dry that I'm not worried about it mildewing at all. If it's dry by tonight or tomorrow night, I'll start carding some of it, and I'll spin up a bit for my class homework. This week we'll have our first lesson in spinning on a wheel, and then we'll get to take a wheel home for more practice. I can't wait to try it out!
In our next installment, we find a lot of new yarn, and our heroine encounters some challenging gauge problems...
First, spinning class! Our first class was on Thursday night, and I can tell already that it's going to be great. It's a small class, only about 10 people. We learned all sorts of useful things about how to choose a good fleece: pick one from a healthy sheep that's been wearing a coat all season (so you don't have to pick the weeds out), and check that it was shorn cleanly and doesn't have a lot of little bits where the shearer had to go back and cut more. Then we all sat down with some rather dirty and greasy fleece and learned how to card and spin it on a drop spindle. And then we each got our own bag of sticky sheep fluff to take home to wash, card, and spin (eventually).
I bought a nice plastic shopping basket at the hardware store, which is perfect for holding a lot of wool and has plenty of drainage in the bottom, so you can lift the fleece straight out of the water without risking agitation, which causes felting. I soaked the fleece in hot water and dishsoap for a long time, in several rinses, using gloves because it was very hot water. (The bathroom smelled a lot like a barn for a few hours.)
And eventually, I had a big pile of relatively-clean fleece! The color changes between the pictures are quite accurately represented - there was a lot of dirt in there. This was all done on Friday night, and it's still drying in the bathroom, but I didn't bother to spread it out very carefully since I didn't mind it taking a few days. The climate here is so dry that I'm not worried about it mildewing at all. If it's dry by tonight or tomorrow night, I'll start carding some of it, and I'll spin up a bit for my class homework. This week we'll have our first lesson in spinning on a wheel, and then we'll get to take a wheel home for more practice. I can't wait to try it out!In our next installment, we find a lot of new yarn, and our heroine encounters some challenging gauge problems...
posted by Alex at 9:53 AM
2 Comments:
it is so nice to learn about fleecies vicariously through you!! keep up the posts so we can see your progress.
I did glance sideways at a shopping basket at the grocery store, but I wound up with the lingerie bag and a lot of brown gooky water! And a colleague kindly let me use her spin cycle, so I have a drying pile of fluff.
Post a Comment
<< Home