Cleaning wool

I had someone on the blog asking about a picture of a fleece drying after being washed, so I thought that would be a good topic for a blog post.  Since I am going to go into disgusting detail, I am providing a warning so people not interested in the details of wool washing can skip this particular post  :)

I had the luck (? heh) of being given several feed buckets of wool when my neighbor had his sheep clipped.  These guys are way too much fun to have around.  While looking for a picture to put here, I realized I have too many cute ones to pick from so I guess there will have to be post another day showing the cuteness in all its glory.  But for now....

 From all that cuteness came several buckets of glory.  None of it was really in a full fleece formation. Because these are 'meat' sheep rather than fiber sheep, the person doing the shearing clipped accordingly and it various piles of wool clipping just ended up on the ground to be picked up and put into the buckets.  It did make for some interesting cleaning since lambs wool washes a bit differently than adult sheep wool.  I think in the future, I probably will try to avoid it for my various 'craft' uses, but it will still be good to use in pantyhose as insulation bundles to help keep the pipes from freezing.

Once I am ready to go, I use 4 5-gallon buckets.  I did not take a picture of the set-up, but basically I just line them up on my porch so I can stand on the ground and they are a bit elevated.   My first idea was to hook a hose up to the tap on the hot water heater, but for some reason, the water just does not come out of that all that hot.  So, I went to filling my canning kettle full of hot water from the sink and carrying it out to the  buckets.  It takes most of two of those to fill the first 5 gallon bucket.  While the kettle is filling again (I am on pump and it runs pretty slow so I have extra time), I go ahead and start putting handfuls into the hot water with a healthy squirt of Dawn in it.  I have tried other soaps, but Dawn really does seem to cut the greasy lanolin better than any of the cheaper options.

I take hold of handfuls of the wool and GENTLY hold them under the water (using heavy duty dish gloves) until it is saturated.  I repeat until the bucket is full of the wool and then I let it soak while I finish filling two more of the buckets with hot water.  I use an old cooking spoon to gently press the wool into the water every few minutes.  I do not actually agitate it, just gently press it down into the water.

 Once the water has started to cool, I transfer it to the next bucket (no soap) by the handful, squeezing as much dirty water out as I can.  You don't want it to cool completely or the lanolin starts to set back up. Once again, it should be handled as gently as possible, avoiding wringing or otherwise agitating it unnecessarily.  Felting happens when there is a combination of heat, soap and friction.  Wool fibers have scales on it that the heat and soap 'open'.  If the fibers 'rub' together, those scales interlock and you get felting.  By limiting the amount of 'rubbing', you help keep it from felting (hopefully).




I let this one sit for about 10 minutes (again not letting it completely cool) and then it gets transferred in the same manner to the third bucket for a second rinse.  As with the other two buckets, you want to gently press the mass up and down in the water to help rinse the soap out, but you don't want to agitate it.

At this point, if I don't feel it is clean enough, I can continue the process with additional buckets of water and even repeat the soap if needed, but at this point, I have not needed more than 1 wash and two rinses.


Once I feel it is clean and well rinsed, I remove it from the water, squeezing as much out as I can by hand.  I like to use mesh laundry bags (usually found in the laundry isle at your favorite general store).  I found ones labeled 'sweater bag' that fit perfectly over the 5-gal bucket that hold just the right amount of wool and have a zippered opening.

If  you have a top load washer, these can go directly into the washer and you can spin a lot of the excess water out of them just by using the 'spin and drain' option setting.  You definitely want to do two batches at once or balance the other side with towels.  I personally did not take my fiber addiction into consideration when I bought my front load washer, so I advertised on Craigslist explaining what I needed and offering to haul someones old washer away for them if they had an old one that they wanted removed.  I actually got a lot of offers... heh.

Once it has been spun, it just needs to be dried. I used some old green fence netting I had around and staple-gunned it to some wood ends to make a drying frame.  I suspend it between two outdoor tables and leave it in the sun for a couple of days, laying a sheet over it at night to keep the dew off.

At that point, it goes into bags to be proceeded in the winter evening when there is nothing else to be done.  I don't have pictures of that at this point, but basically I sit with a sheet on my lap and sit with a brush 'fluffing' it into little cottonball-like puffs.

When  get a box of those done, I put them on the drum carder, making bats for dyeing.

Here is where the lamb vs sheeps wool comes in... the lambs wool just gums up the carder... when carding,  instead of trying to smooth out all the little shlubs, I gather those and use them for felted dryer balls.  With the lambs wool it is ALL little shlubs so it will go through the carder once, just to get rid of the last of the VM and then into a bag for a dryer ball it goes.  Since I can only make so many dryer balls, I think in the future, the lambs wool will get a quick wash and will go directly into the pantyhose for insulation bundles.  Since those get thrown away every year, I think anything more than a cursory wash would be a waste.

Of course, this is just my personal method... I have seen on the internet a bunch of different methods, views on soaps, etc.  I don't claim to be an expert and I am sure if I ever used this method for better fiber types, I would find things I would like to adjust and do differently.  So... if anyone has any suggestions or comments in that direction, I would be happy to see them posted!  This post was in response to someone asking about my methods, so I am sure any input would be welcome by them as well :)