alternatively, I could have called this post, "things I have learned the hard way about washing fleece".
I'm a sucker for a freebie, I really am and who in their right mind these days says no to the offer of a free fleece or two? I'd asked my friend's father in law if he'd consider selling me one of his fleeces some while back. The answer was "no I can't but I'll give you one. What sort of fleece do you want? Why don't you come over and take a look for yourself...." Some weeks went by and I completely forgot about it until my friend's hubby said one morning at school "I've got a fleece in the car for you". Magic I thought and toddled along to collect it. "Do you want a coloured fleece? Dad can't sell them, they're piling up" More free fleece? Hell yes!
Now I've not been spinning all that long in the scheme of things and while I have spun unprepared fleece before, it's always been washed and prepped already. I'd not really considered the logistics of the whole business, or actually, how big a fleece is minus it's sheep.
Bigger than I realised is the answer. It arrived all condensed nicely into the box behind but for some reason, it doesn't want to fit back in. It'd been skirted pretty well already so I decided to jump straight in and "have a go" and separated a chunk of it to wash. About a quarter of it in fact. It filled my whole bath.
In hindsight, I'd have washed quite a lot less in one go. I also wouldn't leave it out to dry under a tree again.
My learning curve has definately been a steep one but for a first attempt, it didn't actually trun out too badly. I didn't felt it and now have some nice soft coloured fleece to ready play with. I still have to pick out all additional vm kindly provided by my laburnum tree but we'll just gloss over that one for now. Onwards and upwards as they say. Roll on the next sunny day.
It could be yours if you stop by the shop and until the end of July, you'll get free postage on everything too.
One upside of the MM being ill is that I have an excuse to sit and spin. (Not that he's actually that ill any more). I've been getting stuck into some of the fleece mountain that seems to be building up here and am spinning some more fibre from the lovely Sara of Babylonglegs. This is one third of a three ply spinners set that she sells in blue banana. I've already spun one single and am cracking in with the last. Looking forward to plying this one as it'll be my first three ply.
Here she is putting the finishing touches to the varnish on our boards. I've actually really enjoyed it all and although I was shattered after the weekend, I've rediscovered my love of painting so I shall definately be doing more. Probably on a bit of a smaller scale than these ones. Fun though aren't they?
So anyway, from the sublime to the absolutely ridiculous, we are now in the midst of a swine flu outbreak. It seems that the mighty midget's school is the local hotspot and so now half of his class are being treated for it including him. It's so rampant through the populous, that they're not even testing anymore, they're just handed out the antivirus like sweets. I have to see the funny side of it though as we ended up seeing the doctor in the car park in the rain as they didn't want the MM in the building. Anybody'd think he was contagious or something?!
