My Bathroom Smells Like a Barnyard!

Oh my, have I got myself into something!

I got an offer of some free fleeces. Any offer of "free" things should be taken with a large pause and deep thought. It could be a great thing or it could be the first steps down the road to insanity. I immediately said yes to the free fleeces. Then I (almost as quickly) said, "I have to see them first". Make sure the barn isn't coming home inside the fleeces and all. I didn't know where they were coming from so I had NO idea of the cleanliness. On the spur of the moment Lil' Pea & I drove up to Wasilla to get the fleeces. After many things going wrong--we got there, only an hour late. My friend hopped into the car & we drove to her neighbor's house. The fleeces looked fine to my very virgin eye. I had only seen fleeces once before, a year ago. I do not hang with "sheep" people. I buy very nice clean roving. Not fleeces removed from the animal less than 24 hrs before. I was rather surprised at how clean the fleeces looked. After some reading (once I got the fleeces home, heaven forbid I read up on this BEFORE diving in.) I learned that "meat sheep" can have less than desirable fleeces. I think these are pretty decent for free fleeces. Here is a picture of the brown fleece as it fell out of the garbage bag.
There is also a white fleece, but we will visit it another day. It is still in the bag. The brown fleece looked pretty cool. Here is a shot of the underside of the fleece, very tight, lots of lanolin...all in all, I think it came from a happy, healthy sheep.

Then I unrolled it.

It is a HIPPY SHEEP!! Talk about a bleach job! The roots are a rich dark brown & the wool is long, shaggy & blonde at the tips. It is SO cool looking. Sorry for the faded pictures. I think the big window I was standing by wreaked havoc on the photos. I have opted for posting them instead of wasting all my time trying to tweek the color balance.

ah, the pretty curls...

The short pieces are 3"-4" and the longest part in the middle of the back is up to 8" long. Wow! I have no idea if this is good or bad, but it really looks cool.

So I started washing the fleeces today. Below is the first batch of soapy water after a 15min soak.

WOW! There is a lot of dirt in there. Each batch has gotten progressively cleaner. I am making classic newbie blunders and hopefully I will not have a ball of felted wool at the end. My first blunder came while staring at the manure filled water in front of me and REALLY not wanting it to touch my bathtub. I had the brilliant thought, "This would make great fertilizer for my soil outside!" Some of you might catch on to the fallacy of that statement right away. It took me quite a bit of time. Enough time to take the tub outside, pour it onto my hillside full of plants waiting to come up, refill it for the next soak and start adding the dish soap again. Again? Yes, that last batch of water that I poured all over my hibernating plants was full of dish soap. I hope I didn't kill an entire hillside of summer joy. The next mistake came when I carried the next full tub of water out to dump it AWAY from my plants and dropped the tub full of water. It busted. It was a really nice tub. Arg. Now my fleece (or rather a small portion of it) is sitting in a clean water soak to get the soap out. Next will be a vinegar soak to get the remaining barnyard smell out and then I should be done. Just have to wait for it to dry...I hate waiting.