The Tour de Fleece recently just ended. For those not in the know it's like the Tour de France...but without bikes. You set yourself a personal goal and then try your damndest to spin up that much fiber. I didn't do it this year because 1. I have a 1.1 oz. drop spindle...it would take forever to get anything decent and 2. I didn't find out about it until I read about it on Yarn Harlot's blog a day or so after it began. I'm not that ambitious. :) It did get me motivated to haul out the fleece from a couple yeas back and get some cleaned up. I thought I'd take some pics of the process and since there are so many this will become two posts.
Here is the fleece in the box I store it in. MAJOR amounts of vegetable manner. Super thick and tangled. I have yet to take it completely out of the box and lay it out flat. I'm going to give it a try here in the next little bit but for now I just pulled out a bunch. Nice and gooey with lanolin (natural sheep oil...it's what water proofs them for those who aren't in the know).
Next I stuck it in the tub (warm water with a tad of dish soap..not too much). I set it on top of the water and let the water naturally soak through everything and really saturate it. After it had really soaked in I turned it over and moved it around and seperated it up a bit. I also removed the larger pieces of vegetable matter at this point.
Here it is after a bit of manipulating.
This is the second rinse. During this one I put more focus into the ends and inner most pieces of the thicker locks.I'll post more pics tomorrow and more info. Blogger is being stupid right now and it has taken me two days jsut to get this much up.
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