TheKnitGirllls Tutorials - Leslie's Fleece Washing Method

all right so I have three different kinds of wool that we're going to work with today all of these I got from the spinning off where you can purchase raw places just in small increments there's 8 ounces of each time here the first is bond which is a very long staple fiber say between 4 and 6 inches depending on where in fleece you pull from so that's going to be our sort of chocolatey color its place is the bond you can see some sections are lighter usually that's the tips they end up a little bit sun-bleached and dirty we've got some vegetable matter here this is usually hay from where they fed or sometimes you get a little bits of poo in there and that's usually even on a jacketed fleece you're going to get a little bit of that so pick out what you can before you wash it and then the rest will come out as you process after it's been washed let's bond then after it's been washed I've got a little sample here of what it looks like before any processing I haven't combed it or anything yet but it's a very light airy fiber and again with a nice long staple it almost looks like human hair to me this particular fleece anyway nice long staple on it next if I've got some California read this again all of the teams setting off all these are different breeds I've not processed before so on to try some different things this you can actually kind of see where it came the shape of it when it was on the sheet these are the tips tips are going to be the dirtiest part that's the part that was on the very top part of the wool the underside is much fluffier this is the part here this is the shear end this was up against the skin and if you pull out a lock you can see it's got a really nice crimp to it okay three to four inches of staple length and the tips are a little bit dirty and matted but once we wash they'll come out and look nice as so this is unwashed and then this is just a couple of grams of washed please this is a saintly just unwashed and wash laughs I've got people a and it's a nice gray and white color although once washed it's actually only white so the gray is dirt the tips you can see here you've got a little bit of discoloration about halfway down and then it gets pretty dirty at the tip this looks like a relatively fine wool it's got a lot of crimp in it like this here though the second cut this means that the Shearer had to go over this area twice so you've got a little section that's much shorter than the rest if you see those you want to get them out when you see them don't leave them for later because these will cause little nips little felted balls inside of your roll and you don't want that so throw those away and so this is unwashed D belay and this is once it's been washed you can see that it really cleans up beautifully fluff you still got a little bit of felted matted tip that will come out once you comb it or guard it but it is a nice fluffy wool so we'll get on with showing you how to actually process cool hey guys so we're in my kitchen antsy right I wanted to give you guys a quick tutorial on how I wash wool full disclaimer I do not presume to say this is the end-all be-all of how to wash wool but this is how I've done it with success so hopefully something here helps you my tools are pretty uncomplicated I wash everything in clear 18 quarts then you can get from Walmart or Target or your local discount store I prefer the clear ones over the colored ones just because that helps me to determine when the wool is actually clean so I can see their start at the bottom or if we're getting close to being done so I usually have two or three of these going at a time then of course your raw fleece I've got three different times from sitting loft you can get roughly there and lots of different times that you can sort of try out a fleece without having to buy a whole fleet support which is great dividing around thinking it I'm sorry keeping an eye on here I already started filling one of itself I like to have because I drained the water into my sink I have a little strainer again noting things that you can get it at any discount store and it fits right into my drain in my sink so it keeps any bits of wool from getting into the drain system of the garbage disposal because they will tangle around the blades that's my husband's house we found that out so now I always use this when I'm draining out the tub of dirty water and it just really dirty you guys will see as we get further in so the way that I do this again late I wash wool I've tried several different ways including separating out each lock structure and lining everything up really pretty into the little mesh bags and washing it and certainly that works but that is really time-consuming for me and I don't really enjoy it so unless this lease is really really dirty I kind of take the short cut way so we'll start with just one of these and I'll go ahead and start filling that's one having the little extension that I have to think really helps this by the way so I filled this one here up about three-quarters of the way through three quarters of the way full the wash I like to use is power scour writing a corn it washes really quickly without a whole lot of soap and it rinses clean away so there's no leftover residue and it gets the land out of the wool easily so not scientific about this at all usually for a 3/4 full 16 quarts container I the first wash I usually do three pumps I don't know exactly what that measures out - but that's what works for me you want to first fill your container then add the soap make sure the soap is distributed into the water then add your wall you never want to agitate the wool after you put it in the water because if you've got hot wet rolled and then you've got a lot of movement you run into the risk of felting so you want to be careful once the wool is wet not to agitate it too much so I just I'm such a country girl but basically I just take the bottle and just kind of stir make sure that it's evenly distributed you don't want a lather you don't want a whole bunch of bubbles so you just take for them so I'm going to take about half of this eight ounces of the double-a I'm pronouncing that with the assumption that it's like rambly if I'm wrong and then we'll just go ahead and put add that to the list of the number of times that I've been wrong so I don't handle the wool with kid gloves I don't really feel like it needs to be handled with kid gloves it is if you've never handled raw wool it can be really greasy and leave your hands feeling nasty you want to definitely wash your hands with you know soap and warm waters before you touch anything else including your face or your body because you don't know where this she just been and it's probably been places you want to think about so I just grab handfuls of it and I'll just pop it on top there so I'm going to move this over so you guys can see so and I just grabbed a handful I just put it in the water let it sort of the water will soak through and it'll pull it down under again you don't want to manhandle it too much because you don't want it to felt again you could separate this whole section into its own little chunks and make sure that the tips are all facing the same way and all that and that'll make processing it faster on the back end but I tend to prefer to have clean 1-mile instead of a dirty roll dirty fleece so I would rather deal with it on the back ends and on the front end so again I separate it into about hand sized chunks and put it in and for me there's no set amount of how much will fit and how much to wash it one time I just kind of judge it by eye and I would say we're about there I like to just have it like a single layer here the water needs to be a cot is you can get it from your standard faucet not boiling but as one if you can stand it and it's all just going to gently make sure that everything is submerged not going to agitate it or stir it just going to make sure that it's all submerged and you can see the soap sorry setting into all that dirt that's lathering and and creating that layer of the bubbles on the top all right so it's all submerged I keep the top of these containers and I'll put it on just to keep the heat even I don't snap it I just keep the layer on top to keep the heat even you want to keep the temperature as stable as you can especially when you're moving it between washes I'll get to that in debt we're going to move this over and I'm going to put another batch and the other container that I've got ready all right so I've already added so here we're not going to do that again I'm going to put more of this delay into water not paying special attention to whether it's tips or the shape down cheer it in if it comes out in a big clump it's fine to pull it apart because you're going to have to do that once you get to the processing anyway just be gentle and slow and pull it apart if it's still too big of a section you can pull it apart some more I would be aware that anywhere that you handle this place you're going to have stuff falling out dirt and debris and such matter so just be aware of that I generally do in my kitchen so I can just sweep them off on I'm dying I'm pretty good here got a little bit less then we will get most of us in here in this wash and I don't want to overload it because then you won't have enough folks actually do everything clean all right so again I'll just use my tongs and generally submerge everything and that's to where the water has covered at all all right that's it here as we move between washes I'll show you how I do that taco and then give you an idea already so that first you can see already how dirty that water is and again I will show you guys when I dump the water but that wool is pretty gross right now all right so we got both of our containers or wool are soaking I generally soak for about 20 minutes between 20 and 30 minutes each wash and then you're going to do I do at least two washes and general at least one rent it all really depends on how dirty the old is as you do your washes you'll see that you'll be able to judge it so I'm going to wash my hands on wood exactly it's time for the next wash okay so the 20 minutes is up of the first wash sorry less my dog I'm filling up a container of clean water so that as I empty the dirty water I will have somewhere to put the fleece so that there's not too long of it being changing temperatures from the hot water to temperature to hot water so I'm going to reposition the camera so you can see how I move everything and then we'll keep going okay so our rule has been soaking in a shower shower water for about 20 minutes bread and eggs at all so you get sort of an idea of how dirty it was but you really won't know until you look at the water after you've taken the roll out so I use an inexpensive colander that I use only for wool it really wouldn't matter if you wash it afterwards really well and you can use it for other stuff as well so I because this water should be too hot for you to put your hands in if it's not too hot for you to put your hands in that's probably not warm enough I just gently pull it out and move it over here to the strainer because of the way wool clings to itself you're probably going to get little hangers on sections enough fun you just want to gently move it over you can also use some thick rubber gloves if you didn't want to use Tong long as you're careful and you don't handle it too much then you don't have to be concerned about selfing this is why I like to use my kitchen because everything is handy alright we've almost got all the wool all right this is just the first wash this is pretty gross so this is mostly dirt also probably traces of foo and vegetable matter and hay and all that there's a whole layer of sediment at the bottom here look another reason that I keep the strainer inside us video thanks so here's the wool in the colander and I'll just gently press down get the extra water out and I've already got another container over here ready with the next wash so I'll just go ahead and take my wool and put it in the other container because it's sort of as you pull it out it folds and cleans on itself so I put it in the new container I just want to make sure that it that it spreads out and reposition here so you guys can see I'll just take what's in here put it in the water it's already got soap in it and I'll just gently move it around to make sure that it's as untangled as I can get it so the soap can get all the way into all of the fiber and you could move your roll directly from your dirty container to your clean container but I like to get as much of that dirty water out of my hand so it's all in here now a little bit hang on now we're going to put our lid over here I'm generally unable to keep track of what number watch I'm on I usually only do a little bit at a time or I'll do it in segments so everything burns second wash or what have you just use whatever methods for you to keep track this work maybe label your containers first or second off whatever works for you so here comes the gross part your resolution all right so again I've got my strainer and I think we switched out our two sides thing for a big deep one and that actually works really well for fleas so I just make sure that my strainer is in place and I try to pour the water directly in there so that nothing gets underneath the strainer see how gross the water is is catching some wool a little bits a little bit on this let's see the sediment in here ugh gross that's all from your wolf yummy right I'll risk everything out real well that's a towel over here on the other side of my think so everything can drain [Music] and then once you've got things relatively clean usually your strainer is going to pick up a little bits of grass or Vegemite or whatever it's the wool is in good shape you can take it out and rinse it gently and then I'll put it back in my container that's currently soaking they can get another wash now we're on wash number two in our container here once that sat for 20 minutes then we'll be able to tell if it needs another washer if it's ready to start rinsing and that's just going to based on the derby the water is that's how I'll judge so at this point you can either go ahead and start washing horrible start another batch for the purposes of this particular tutorial I'm just going to leave this here so that you guys can see as we go so we'll be back in about 20 minutes after this is had time to soak okay our second wash has sat for 20 minutes and now we're going to take a look at the roll and see whether or not it needs another wash or whether it's ready to start the rinse process and when I say rinse I really just need soap in plain water instead of water with soap in it so you can see the roll you can see that the war isn't completely clear but it is relatively clean so as I move this leaf around you can see that we don't have that layer of gunk engrossed at the bottom so what we'll do is hit our colander and we'll pull out the sleeve you can already tell the difference it's much lighter and cleaner than it was in our previous loss you can also clearly tell that there's no more wool in there so it's another indication that we're pretty done washing it and now we're just going to rinse it this black line that you see is actually must think that's not dirt so now it looks kind of like cotton sliver we're going to press out water which is like fan here now we're going to rinse this container out again I've got my little strainer in there so it's attached any of the dirt or such matter or the shortcuts we separate we wash the wool so we do still have a little bit a little film of dirt so it does need to be rinsed but the water is clear enough that if we're done with the washing and that's particularly some please disregard here than others and they require more than one more you really just want to use your best judgement the more that you get clean and get all the dirt and stuff out now the left will come out when you're processing it a lot of times you can tell if you drum card your rule if it's not been washed well enough or the dirt was just caked onto the fiber it'll come out when you're drunk carding and you lose your Carter and they'll be a whole layer of dirt and dust and stuff underneath so I'm filling our container with clean water still hot as you can get it we want to keep the temperature between the washes and the rinses as even as possible temperature changes will shock the wool and that will also cause selfing not just going from hot water to bring temperature but if you work to go from hot water to cool water that can cause your Wolves of felt in fact that's actually how you intentionally full or felt roll is shocking it between temperatures so we've got a one under wolf your own topical thing and we're going to take a look at our second container that's also soaking over here just come on close up alright so I've got my second container of wool over here you can already see as you look through the side that this is about the same as the other it's not squeaky clean but it is significantly cleaner than the last wash so the water is cloudy and a little bit dirty but it stopped being that really muddy brown color so we're ready to start rinsing so we've got this over here it's just about full and now we're going to transfer our washed whole even though I'd say it's washed you're still going to see a little bits of things in here this is like grass that's worked its way into it there the little sticky burs that you get on your clothes when you walk through grass will shoot get them too so that's what a lot of this is it's grass or it's those little sticky burrs that you'll have to work out as you process the wool so just transfer it gently over go ahead and get that sticky burr out and I just gently make sure that it is sort of in a layer so that there's no big clumps and the water can penetrate all the way through and put the lid on top keep the temperature as even as possible now the same crop does over here and just gather out all of our walls move it over here to our colander also line our counters with towels and stuff when I do this because this inevitably going to you're going to have spills and things will just make cleanup easier if you wanted to you could actually just wash the wool directly in your sink and not use separate containers by that I mean you could fill your sink up with enough water episode at the world and then after your 20 minutes is up you can take the wall out empty the drain repeat the process definitely could do that I just don't like digging into the sink when it's full of dirty water so I attended students in separate containers Club like they do more than one batch at the time and I have tried several different five containers and because I like to get it much done at once the but then I ended up going with their size because I can list it even when it's full of water and that means I can pick it up to drain anything so I rip it out I don't want to have any dirt or soap in here because I want to have this next batch be just around I'm insured clean thing process is before make sure you get the water as hot as possible not boiling water but just as hot as possible and so once that fills up I'll add the clean wall back there will be another soap and then we'll lay it out so that I can drive so we'll be back alright so our second no it's our first rats not our second I have sat for 20 minutes I'm going to go ahead and pull the wool out and then we'll take a look at the water and see if it still got a whole lot of dirt and stuff in it then we'll do another rinse if it's pretty clean then I'll call it done so we're going to grab all of our wool put it in a colander and you see it's pretty clean there's a few well there's some little granules of dirt in there but the water itself is clear from the residue that came out from the soap the water itself is clear so to me then the fleece is as clean as it's going to get with watching so at this point I'll drain both this and to my other tub and I'll either lay out the fleece on old towels or on a wire rack outside or somewhere where it's going to get a lot of airflow and dries quickly as possible so I'm going to do that now and then when I come back I'll show you guys Rauf lease versus clean fleece sources process leaves versus fun just small amounts to give you guys an idea of how transformative washing please candy so

Channel: TheKnitGirllls

Views: 10,914

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Keywords: knit, knitting, knitter, theknitgirllls, theknitgirlls, theknitgirls, DIY, craft, crafty

Id: cY17R7bH5mw

Length: 32min 40sec (1960 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2017