Rub A Dub Dub!
As expected, the locks and the wads of fleece were pretty dirty!
There was even a layer of fine reddish sand in the bottom of the
sink! You can see in the rinse sink how much whiter they looked after
just one soak/wash. I used Mane and Tail as my soap. I think it did a
serviceable job. The wads of fleece I only washed once but the 2 bags
of locks had to be soap washed twice to get rid of all the yellow and
brown tips. Never having done this job before I worried about the
possibility of felting so I tried to err more on the side of
negligence than vigor! It certainly showed with the locks. It took 2
wash/soaks and rinses before I was even remotely satisfied with the
results!
You can see that some of the tips are still on the not-so-white side
but they are certainly clean enough to spin. They've come a looong
way from the golden yellow sticky bundles! And yes, there were a few
spots where the ends were a little matted because I wanted to rub
them a bit too much but they did come apart with a little tug. I
think I'm going to take them and spin them just the way they are
without carding. All I'll do is introduce a bunch of static by
carding as the fiber is basically aligned. And because I pretty much
handled every lock to lay them out like this I don't think anything
here is going to be difficult to draft. It is a fairly fine but stiff
fiber. I reminds me of the Cotswold I spun for my Knit Forever
sweater. I think I will try to spin it lace weight.
I had 4 mesh bags of this loose fiber. It looks rather compact here
but it isn't. It's almost the same crimpy fiber as the dark brown in
yesterday's post so it clings to itself. It is fairly soft though and
I finished spinning it up tonight. It almost filled one 4 ounce
Baynes bobbin. I was thinking about plying it with the dark brown but
the dark brown only filled a bobbin 3/4 full so I know there will be
some white left over - not enough to do anything with, for sure. I
decided I will spin up the brown/ecru marl lot tomorrow and see how
much of it there is and then decide what I will ply with what. These
are such small batches of fiber they are fun to play around with.
It's an opportunity with a lot of appeal, changing up the weight of
the singles and just fooling around with drafting etc... It's a
pleasant change from the rather large spinning project I'm working on
right now which becomes a bit monotonous at times... but that's a
story for another post! I'm off to bed after a very busy day - Cheers!
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