The wool shed!

The major task undertaken this weekend was to make a start on the bags of wool in Anne's shed - to remove them from the plastic bags they came in, skirt them, removed daggy and soiled wool, pick through the wool for the worst dirt/vegetable matter, and discard any 'not worth spinning' wool (too short or second shear typically. There's no point in sorting and cleaning it only to find it is not going to spin well, although on that matter Anne is going to have a go at felting some wool sometime and see if that may be a good use for it).

We were able to spread the fleeces over an outside table in the back yard - not quite the ideal sorting table, but it served the purpose - a lamb sized fleece fits well - a ewe's fleece is way too large, but once trimmed is generally manageable.

We did three bags - about 10 fleeces all told - with the same sort of figures I had struck at home (with the total of 3 bags I sorted there) - a reduction by about a 1/3 to a 1/2 by weight.  All this in 90+ degrees - I sweated buckets!!

We did find the 'best' fleece to date - relatively clean and nice and long staple, which makes a nice musical ping when tugged - it will clean up and spin really well.  The goal will be to wash as much as I can in a couple of loads as often as possible and re-package into 'lots' of wool for spinning and dyeing to build up stocks in preparation for hiring a loom from the guild and turning it into cloth.

Some ways off...

sorting a lamb's fleece

sorted wool in storage bags

sorting a ewe's fleece