Posted by Meagan | Posted in Cleaning, Fleece Processing 1 | Posted on 16-07-2009
My fleece was purchased completely raw. It still had plenty of vegetable matter (they call this VM) such as burrs, twigs, even a flower or two. Oh, and poop. Certain parts of the fleece, namely those around the butt and back legs, will often have “tags”, which are felted pieces of fleece and poop. They are pretty much useless and should be discarded. Other veggie matter can be picked out. From what I’ve heard in pretty much all stages you will pick out veggie matter, but I figure I’d get as much out before washing as I could.
My fleece also still had lanolin. Lanolin is a wax produced by the sheep’s skin to keep it hydrated and protected from the sun, as well as conditioning its fibers and protecting them against water. It makes a great moisturizer for humans, and is a component in many cosmetics. You generally want to remove this from the fleece before spinning it, although you can spin it “in the grease”. To remove the lanolin, you need to use hot water.
The first thing I did with my fleece was to skirt it, or remove 3-6 inches around the edge. Much of this is felted and useless. However my sheep’s genetics cause it to have a darker shade of fiber on its legs, and I didn’t really want to lose all of it so I skirted very little of my fleece and have kept it. Once I am done processing the majority of it, I will come back and see what I can salvage from the skirted area. Already I know it will require much more washing and picking apart, but since I am only processing one fleece, time is really inconsequential.
After it was skirted, I started cleaning it up. I pulled off pieces of the fleece, generally a 3×2 chunk, took out the big pieces of VM and any poop, shook it to get any dust and loose bits off, and piled the pieces into large plastic shopping bags.
Surprisingly enough, this took less than an hour. At the end, I was left with two Loblaws green shopping bags (larger than your average shopping bag) of white/creamish fleece, half a bag of skirted brown fleece, and a tiny bag of waste.