It's been knit: Bathroom cotton plus more

Today's post is brought to you by the room: bathroom. No worries. We're all about the clean factor here.

First up is an FO. Shower mitt. Done on 8's in some basic cotton. It was meant to be part of a gift exchange but I had forgotten it at the time (this has been done for months) so I kindly took over it. It needs some tweaking. As it is once it gets wet it grows way too much to be of much use. I like it though. Makes my tub look inviting. I do have a pattern somewhere but I'd have to track it down.

See? Looks super inviting huh? :) That is a natural chocolatey brown (and black occasionally) alpaca fleece. I've been feeling the urge to spin lately (is my wheel put together? of course not). My sister and I have been talking fibery pursuits these last couple days so I decided to pull this bad boy out. He is large. Like stuffed in a 55 gallon black garbage bag you use for outside stuff large. In an attempt to find out just how large I managed to stick it on my itty bitty little home scale but it was difficult to see the number and I'm not sure it was correct anyway. During processing alpaca can lose anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of it's total weight. That's on an already skirted fleece. Is this one skirted? Absolutely not. It's one gross, matted, clumpy fleece currently. The amount of vegetable matter is insane. At one point I was afraid to open the layers up and have a mouse or something come flying out. Do you know what it's like to be afraid of a fleece? It isn't pretty. I have 2 small sweater bags full of fiber in my washer. I'm currently on rinse 3. I'm hoping it doesn't take much more. The fleece in the tub has soaked overnight so with any luck a good amount of junk will have dissolved enough to shorten my overall cleaning time. There is a place in Salt Lake City that will process this for me but it has to be cleaned first. They are very honest and have no problem tossing a fleece if it's just too horrible. They say on there that a free one often costs you more, whether that's in time or money. This one was free and it will take a lot of time. If I send it to them (Spinderella) though they will process it into roving for me. I'm tempted. Very tempted. I know I could do it myself but processing a fleece is a time intensive thing I'm not sure I want to do it. Skirting it (removing tags and VM and the like) seems like such an overwhelming task at times. I'm thinking of cleaning it up the best I can and sending in pictures to see if they'll even accept it. If they will I'll totally send the beast in. Stay tuned for more pictures of the process.