Bath night

A little bit of spinning going on, but in an effort to speed up the scouring process I have 'up-scaled.'

Using the same method as in the past, but using the bathtub instead of the kitchen sink.  I've bought three larger baskets (yet to drill holes in the bottom of them though), and a few more larger laundry bags.  First step, as always is to pick just the best locks - some are over 4 inches long, others way less than 2 - I'm not washing/saving the latter. Load up the laundry bags, and put them into the plastic baskets - I use bamboo skewers to keep the bags in place (they float up on the first rinse - all other times they happily sink - I bet there is some science involving a light coating of emulsified lanolin, but I'm happy to just know when it occurs and how to fix it).

Final sort of fleece, into laundry bags in baskets

Once ready to go it's into the bath - I've tried this first lot with 3/4 cup of Dawn (yellow) dishwashing liquid.  Along with the hot tap water (120 degrees F) is two large pots of boiling water to raise the overall temp to nearer 140 degrees.

Scouring (way before the water goes brown)

The extra heat

Then the first rinse (the floater)

submerged courtesy of weight

And the second rinse with the addition of a couple of tablespoons of white vinegar (softens the wool).

the sinking rinse

After the final drain - the remaining water is removed by rolling the laundry bags of wool in towels (can be done in a washing machine on spin), and then onto the drying rack - I've managed to maximise the one 'rack' I have - and will come up with a better way of stretching it out as while "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" is a weighty tome - I can probably do better technically.

all the wool in a small place

and now drying

So revised times (once the weight is in - and the wool is dry) for washing all the fleeces should be considerably less than the first round, as while it takes a bit more than an hour to run through this process - there's a large increase in the total wool washed in one go.

A couple of the 'clumps' of wool in the photo could perhaps do with a second wash - I can only wait until I run a second lot through to really tell if I'm getting consistent results, and if needed I can take those bits and then try dying it (while still un-carded).