Wool Washing ~ Love Ewe Farm's Romney, Mr. Bates

hello everyone welcome to the natural spinner I'm working on Bates's fleece to get it ready for washing so this is the third installment in the series about his fleece and you'll see me follow this through all the way to the end product which probably will be something knitted so if you're just seeing this for the first time and you don't know what I'm talking about I visited the farm where the Sheep lives he's a Romney and then I went back and was there for the shearing and got his fleece and did some skirting there at the farm so there are two videos before this one that lead up to this so if you want to check them out have a look so finally to the washing stage on basis please and I'm just sitting here picking locks out while I'm thinking about a couple things to tell you before I get started I've been washing fleece since about 2010 I sort of am a purist at heart and I wanted to learn how to make my own fiber first spinning not just buy it at the store so that's what got me going and and I looked on Craigslist found a free fleece and the rest is sort of history as they say I absolutely love raw fleece I love the feel of it I love the smell of it I love the look of around place I just love everything about roughly so I can sit for hours and hours very happily just pulling out locks and sorting it into the baskets here to get ready for washing look I'm gonna be washing it in two ways first to keep the lock integrity which is what I'm doing now I'm pulling out the locks to keep them in there lock form so they're not tangled and the other way is just to be grabbing handfuls like this and put it in a basket I use a plastic basket and what I use to wash in those two forms I use a basket a plastic basket in a bucket that's the buckets downstairs and though in my wash think just a simple meshed plastic basket these I found at the Dollar Tree and I also found these at the Dollar Tree it's the same material different shape but this makes LOC washing really easy so after the locks are all picked out then they're lined up in the trays the little baskets and all I do is layer them they hear them and then the final one is always an empty one because then it's sandwiches all the fibers in there and they don't move when you wash them it works fantastic I love this way no more little sausage tool bags those days are over I did that for a while and didn't do it very much because it took so much time to do it sandwich team sandwiching the fibers in the basket works absolutely great I love it I also keep a record I have an index card that has all the weights each batch is weighed and for his fleece I am washing about 8 ounces in this basket and you see it looks like it takes up the whole basket and I wouldn't be a lot of room for water to get around in it once it's submerged in the bucket but there will be this will mush way down once the water gets in it it will compact it way down but they'll still be plenty of water a room for the water and the cleaning agent to get around so yes I keep a track I keep track on my little index card which is great it helps me to figure out my clean yield to I've got not only the name of the year and what farm it's from but I've also got the grand in raw and washed so that I know what I start out with I know I finished with after it's dry and I can do the math and figure out the yield you I do have a small scale over here that I use it's just a kitchen scale and I use that from my wing so it's always consistent in case one scales off a little bit I would use the same one I do wash anywhere from four to eight ounces of fleece at a time depending on the type of fleece I'm washing some fleeces are poofier they're more spongy in nature long wools which is Romney is a long wool tend to be they feel heavier they're just they're more drapey their locks are just different say than a merino they have less crimp and they have less elasticity as as a general rule than the finer breeds so if it if six if 8 ounces of merino filled this up way up here and I couldn't push it down rule I would take an ounce or two out until it sort of just filled to the top of the basket and then I would also just my cleaning agent for the amount of fleece just a word about how I'm going to be washing or what you'll see me do there's a lot of information out there about fleece washing a lot of opinions a lot of different methods and I can't go into detail about every single one of them I trust that you will do your own research and then look at the different ways and if you're seeing this video and watching me do it the way I'm doing it you'll either see that and think oh that's great or you'll say yeah that doesn't really work for me and you'll go and do in a different way and that is totally fine there are just too many ways of doing it for one way to be the right way you and you'll see me do quite a bit of squeezing to get the water out in between the washing and the rinsing and I'm very gentle and I try not to over handle the fleece because it can felt it a little bit least usually wants to felt at the cut ends it's just the nature of the fleece and also this video is just about washing a sheet fleece I'm not going into details about alpaca or angora rabbit or mohair or anything like that just sheep please and the method I use is what typically works for a Romney of an average Romney please so keep that in mind as well you may have to adjust things for the type of place that you're washing alright so I weighed out my basket to police and I've got my locks ready to go and I'm gonna head on down to my washroom and get started before I actually watch the fleece I'm gonna put it in a cool water rinse to remove all the really loose stuff the dirt the dust anything not lanolin because this is just cool water so it will not remove the lanolin but it will get all the easy stuff off you can let it soak overnight it'll get an even more step and you'll see that comes off in just this really short rest make sure that you are aware of the felting properties of your wool that your washing this kind of handling could felt a fleece that felt really easily Romney will felt that I've done a lot of washing on this fleece and I've pretty much been handling it the same way the whole time and it's never felt it on me yet so and if I were letting it soak overnight I probably wouldn't even do this I just dump it in and leave it but trying to loosen anything that's on there and this short shorter I've done it with the mesh laundry bags I've also just put the fleece directly in the bucket had to fish it out with my hands I liked the baskets better so now dump this up you'll see just how much dirt came out in that really fast yes we have lots of red clay here so I think that helps in the wash because now the washing agent which is I use power scare it doesn't have to work through all that dirt so now I can just focus on the lanolin and any remaining dirt without having to go through all that red stuff so I rinse this and refill it with the hot water for the washing mist now for the actual washing part I've got at least 140 degree water in the bucket I have been experimenting using the tap water which is just under the 125 with the lower lanolin fleeces like the Romney and it's been doing okay but I've been feeling like I needed to do it twice so for me it's just easier to heat a little water add it to the tap water to bring it up to the one at least 150 I think it's usually around to I say 150 minimum of 140 but I think it's around 150 which gives it a few attempt you know a few degrees to cool while it's sitting in the wash soak so that it won't get below I don't know 120 s or so I don't want it to cool too much so this just gets put straight in the water after it got its rinse already I already put the power scar in here and it's gonna get a couple of squeezes to force the power scour and water through and it's that's heavy duty the basket I use a basket a second one to hold the fleece completely under the water because it likes to float which helps keep the heat in for the duration it doesn't keep it you know completely at the temperature that it started at but it does help keep it fairly consistent longer than if I didn't have a lid on it the thing is a timer 15 minutes 20 minutes up to 30 minutes is okay I've been having really good luck with 15 or 20 for lower lanolin police's so oops timer goes on and I make sure I keep this with me make sure it's really loud in case I set it down because I've been known to walk away leave please sit I mean cool a little too much that might make it hard to get the lanolin off but to wash the locks I do the exact same process as I did there the locks layers they're just layered in the baskets there's four ounces in here I'm gonna do the pre-rinse first but since I can't squeeze the fiber for the sake of the video I'm just gonna do it rather quickly have a small container I've measured up [Music] I haven't yet found a clear plastic tub with a lid to fit in here I'm working on it I just keep looking around so until I do find one I've just been using to sort of act as a heat retainer for that and then 15-minute timer come back do two rinses so this gets done exactly the same steps as in the bucket with the loose fiber the random police you'll see these dried up on the rack drying up on the rack I should say it's been sitting for it's 15 minutes pushing squeezing they're great for measuring out the quantities of wool these batches are all eight ounces this is gonna get dumped outside I don't risk it and dump anything with lanolin in it down my sink so this is going outside now for the rinse up just filled it up with tap water so it's about 123 or so just do a couple squeezes just forcing the water through keep it down under the water good helps the basket down and the temperature consistent which for the rinse isn't as important but I just always put the lid on pretty much so this will get two rinses I'll come back and dump this out and then do one last rinse in just a few minutes I will put my timer on again just so I don't forget it it's not as important in your rinses if you happen to forget your time that it's been sitting because you hopefully I've gotten all of your lanolin out from the wash so this listed for 15 and I will come back to it and put it in for a second rinse all right it's time to take it out of its friends this is the first friends I'm going to do - since this shouldn't have I'm just gonna use hot tap water and fill this I do try to use just a little bit less water for the rinse both rinses actually just a little less than that water and this is fiber rinse I'm just gonna put not measuring particular I'm just gonna put a little bit in I don't know exactly how much it's supposed to be just put a bit I think it helps keep the fibers just a little softer and just note on water temperature the hot water that I washed in was like I said somewhere around 150 to begin with it cooled some while it's at to wash and then this is the second rinse so it it's still hot water though I'm not putting it in cool or cold water I am keeping the water still hot it might not be as hot as the wash but it's still hot so there's no shocking of the fibers between really hot water and really cold water because that would definitely lead to some fill ting so we don't so this is its second rinse the water should be fairly clear if not completely I don't always go for absolutely clear a little tiny bit of still coloration isn't a big deal it's going to get it's going to get another wash after it's been made into yarn and then if it's knit or woven into something after that it'll be washed yet again so it has more opportunity to rinse anything out afterwards but there's plenty rinsed out just from two rinses on this basket [Music] maybe ten or fifteen come back and then it'll get wrung out swim around in my laundry bag and I'll take it outside and I'll swing it around give it some good centrifugal force and get a lot of the water out and then I'll carry it upstairs and you'll see my drawing right next back upstairs and this is my drying rack it is just repurposed old wooden framed screens for Windows that came out of an old house on the farm where I work and I had a 2x4 frame made for this there are six of them all together and they just slide in and out so I can easily get the pieces at the back and I've brought the eight ounces up and turned it out here and just spread it out a little bit and I've turned out the baskets of fleece here the locks these here I just take it and just flip it I mean it's that simple and if I am out of room because I'm washing a lot of fleece let's say then you can just take these and stack them you know like that put another one and just keep going like that that works well to get more vertical instead of horizontal but most of these ships on here I just have to push things around a little bit to make room and everything I put to dry by the way has little labels in case I'm washing a lot of fleece I just want to know what's what sometimes I washed a lot of dark fleece at the same time and I don't want to hit something up or confused what it is and end up putting it in the wrong bag for storage and speaking of bags for storage I use a plastic kitchen bag with a taped label to it you can use lots of other things including pillowcases zippered pillow covers I've heard of people using those or you can make your own if Europe if you're so err you can just take old fabric and sew up your own bags with maybe a drawstring tie or something like that I prefer the plastic bags not only because I can tape this on them but they just they just work for me I don't know maybe it was just out of quick necessity that I grabbed one one day years ago and I've just been using these ever since they're big enough that I can fit almost any fleece in them fully washed and then all the smaller bags where I keep different things organized like here the washed locks and here's some combing ways and this is some comb top that I've started so there's a little preview of my next video on this fleece which is coming Oh in terms of locks these are dried locks and they're puffed up all nice you know this is an entire four tray batch all stacked in one tray but every little thing they came out beautiful and clean and I'm really loving the fiber rinse so far I think it is making things just a little bit nicer so I hope that everything I've showed you has made sense to you and if you any problems if you didn't understand something I love something out that you need to know please don't hesitate to contact me in whatever way you're comfortable with you can leave a comment down below you can private message me I'm happy to answer anything that I can to help you so the next video like I was just saying will be combing that's the next step in this place processing so look out for that and I really appreciate you spending your time with me following me along on this fleece journey this one particular fleece and watching it go for all of its stages so until next time thanks so much for watching

Channel: TheNaturalSpinner

Views: 21,727

Rating: 4.9548388 out of 5

Keywords: Romney, raw, fleece, washing, scouring, Unicorn Power Scour, Power Scour, Sheep, Love Ewe Farm, Fleece Prep, Locks, wool

Id: 9xe22VHbuo8

Length: 24min 36sec (1476 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 24 2017