I took the plunge, as it were and created a suint bin. The process is
so simple, just fill a bin with water, rainwater preferrably and soak
your first fleece for around 5 days. The lanolin in the fleece kind of
ferments and starts up a saponification process, whih is basically soap
in simple terms. There is a great blog post
here by Moz who goes into great detail and has a good FAQ section.
The
main points I have to add are, wear rubber gloves after the process has
started as the smell is hard to get out of your hands (the dogs loved
it!) and set the bins as far away from the house as you can. Mine are at
the top of the field behind my greenhouse, but not everyone has a
field! Maybe you have neighbours you dislike? Oh, that was wicked of me
;)
The
first fleece that started the suint was the Southdowns lot that was a
gift from a friend. It's lovely and white and pleasant to spin, but a
little coarse when knitted. I have lots of projects in mind for it,
mostly gloves and rugs. It's not soft enough to go around the neck, and
it may be too harsh for gloves, but we'll see! It takes colour well, so
it's being used for test swatches at the moment.
an you see how
lovely and white it is now? There are still some yellow parts and I'll
wash those in warm water and then dye them.
Next
into the bin was the beautiful Swaledale/BFL. I'd forgotten how filthy
this fleece was, compared to the little bags of white clouds that the
few handfuls of this turned out like when I washed it back in England! I
have to admit that I'm the most excited about this fleece :D
What
do I look like? I think I've gone native with my footwear! Leggings,
socks and clogs, haha. I wear these clogs all the time, but in the wet
weather they're lethal as there's no grip at all. I've slipped up that
many times!!!
On Friday, I met up with a very nice lady who gave me the fleeces from her small flock in return for a baby blanket.
I
had so much fun making this, it's the Neat Ripple pattern from Attic24.
I've had a quick look in the bag at the fleeces and I'm more than a
little excited! The Oessant seems quite coarse, so will probably go into
the rug, but the others are soooo soft. I'll start work on them next
week :D
What a fun project you have started! This process with the fleece is really quite fascinating. And, the blanket you made is adorableble for a little one. I hope you have the start of a wonderful week. We're expecting a little rain here in southern California. Pat
ReplyDeleteThe weather is pretty good at the moment and I dry my fleeces in the greenhouse!
DeleteI did some fleeces with this method the other year, I think it was 5 I processed in total, its an easy method but the drying of the fleeces after is a bit of a pain and seems to take so long
ReplyDeleteIt's all drying well in the greenhouse and I'm getting through it all so fast now :D
DeleteThat is a good idea. I only had the occasional fleece and would put them to soak overnight in our used bathwater, and then put the fleece in onion bags on the line to drip off and dry. A greenhouse dryer sounds like a good plan.
ReplyDeleteI have a little spinner to get the wool drier, it's brilliant :D
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