How to Wash a Fleece

I have had people at shows ask how we wash our fleeces here. So I'm just going to give the basic overview of what we do.

Items needed:

-A fleece
-A large container to wash in.(We use our bathtub, but other people use trash cans, rubbermaid tubs, or even wash basins.) Make sure its big enough to hold the amount of fleece you want to wash.
-Soap. ( We use laundry soap)

The very first thing I do is lay the fleece out and reskirt it. Yes I skirt the fleeces as we are shearing, but I always reskirt as I go to wash. I do this with every fleece even if I buy it. You just never know if something was missed and I usually have more time to look through the fleece and pick out the little things.

Next I put the fleece into the tub. I lay it out as much as possible. This opens it up so that the water can cover more area. Now start covering it with water. The articles I've read say that the water should be over 135*F. Make sure the fleece is covered completely. Add the soap. Make sure you add enough to make the water slightly slippery. Do not agitate the water to create suds.


I let the fleece soak for about an hour if not longer. Then drain the water. Give the fleece time to drain out. Most times I will put it into strainers to remove as much of the water as possible. Now back into tub for the rinse. Once again make sure you cover the fleece completely. This time it doesn't have to soak as long. Normally about 20-30mins. Once again do a drain to get the most out of water out. I rinse again afterwards just to make sure the fleece is as clean as possible.

After the second rinse it's time to dry the fleece. Lay it out as open as possible. Be sure to turn the fleece as often as you can. A whole fleece will normally take a couple days to dry.

A Day to Dye

We use many different techniques for dyeing. It mostly depends on what we are doing the dyeing for. I took some pictures one day while I was dyeing some locks. 

First I picked the colors. For this day I was using primary colors. Red, Yellow, Blue.

Soaking the locks in hot vinegar water. I let them soak for about 20mins. 

I sprinkled the dye onto the locks and then added more locks. I don't normally add more locks, but I had put to much water in and needed the locks to sop it up. 

Locks in the process of dyeing. 

Before the blue and red took over the yellow. 

rinsing.

a wider shot of the rinsing. 

For dyeing we use acid dyes. Acid dyes need an acid to strike ( take up). We use vinegar as our acid. Depending on the technique that we are using I will either soak in vinegar water or wait until we've added the dye to add the vinegar. All of our wool sits in the dye bath until the water has cooled and then goes through rinse cycles until the dye doesn't bleed.

I hope to be posting about some of the other ways that we dye.

Wool Mill Road Trip

This past week we decided to take a trip to Zeilinger's Wool Mill. We have been sending our wool to them for nearly 10yrs to be processed into rovings. This is the first time that we have actually taken wool up there ourselves. We generally send it with another family or drop it off at wool shows.

We left on Wednesday night and got there late. Went into Zeilinger's first thing in the morning. They did our wool intake. That wasn't much different than any other time dropping off at a show. After we were done with the wool intake.

After our intake we took a quick tour of the facilities. We got to see the combing machine, roving machine, and the picker. That was just in one building. When we went to the next building we saw where they wash the wool. Then we got to see the machine that makes batts. They were working on an alpaca batt when we came in. In the upstairs of that building is where they make the socks.

All in all we had a good time. I can't wait to see the rovings and batts that we get back. It is a never ending circle though and we have started washing and picking for the next batch to go out.

The batting machine

A side picture of it

A top view

fleeces drying

That's to Graphic

** Disclaimer: I am a parent and I do not tell you how to raise your children, please don't use this as a place to bash my parenting. **

The other day I was working at my job. For those of you who don't know me. I pretty much can do anything on the front end of Walmart. This particular day I was working in customer service. Not that extravagant of a day. Nothing much going on.

I had a customer bring back up a dvd series of "House", with a small boy in her cart. Probably about 4 or 5 years old.  I went through the normal questions; "Return or exchange", "Is there anything wrong with it?". The customer was very nice and in no way snotty. I found she wanted to do an exchange and there was nothing wrong with the movie. She wanted to exchange it for the "Bones" series. Turns out she already had this season of house.

I said something at that point that "Bones" was my daughter and I's favorite show. The lady proceeded to tell me that the show is to graphic for her young son.

This got me thinking. What exactly is to graphic? I'm talking in general senses. I don't let my children watch "Edward Scissorhands" or "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", but my daughter really does love to watch "Bones" and we watch "House" on occasion. My children have also watched and assisted in kidding and lambing season. They have helped to butcher chickens and turkeys.


I don't find these tv shows to be to graphic and I'm very open with them about the tv being about actors and the storys and blood are fake. I think my children are well rounded for it and they learn, so yeah "Bones" isn't to graphic for my kids. Not after they've torn apart a chicken.

Traditions

Christmas for my family is filled with many traditions. I love some of these traditions and have carried them over to my family. Some I do still love, but they directly conflict with my husbands family traditions.

Some of my favorite traditions include dinner. My parents always did dinner on Christmas eve. My dad would read the story of Jesus' birth and we would light the Jesus Candle then have dinner. The next morning it was like a challenge to see who could get up the earliest. We weren't allowed to open any presents until everyone was awake, but we could always get in our stockings. Another of my favorite traditions is the movie "White Christmas". I love that movie and still watch it every year. My children aren't quite old enough to enjoy it yet, but I'm hoping some day they will.

I'm hoping this year was the beginning of a new tradition. My family never really went to Christmas Eve service. (at least not that I remember) This year I packed up the kids and took them to Christmas Eve service. It was something I remembered doing as a teenager and loved. I'm hoping to keep this as a tradition and repeat it year after year.


What are some of your favorite traditions? Whether new or old family traditions.

Making Memories

I have a lot of memories of things my family did as a child. Some of my favorites are the dinners on Christmas eve. We have been making lots of memories with my kids. Well at least I hope we have. We bake a cake every year for Jesus' birthday and go to Grandma and Aunt Alicia's house every Christmas eve.

Another of my favorite memories is putting up the Christmas tree with my family and being able to look at all of the ornaments and knowing the story that was attached to each one. My favorite always has been my dad's ornament. It was always the last to go on the tree and my dad was always the one to put it on. I'm hoping to instill something like that in my children.

Now for the fun part. Every year the teachers at school would send home little ornaments with us kids to go on the tree. Mom looked forward to it every year. We homeschool so I am now the teacher in charge of all those cool gifts. I decided to work on salt dough ornaments this year with the kids.The recipe was really easy:
2cups all purpose flour
1cup salt
3/4 cup water ( I ended up using almost a cup)

Mix flour and salt together. Add water slowly. Mix until if makes a dough mixture. Make your ornaments. Bake in oven for 20mins at 200degrees. Really simply and really fun. The kids had a fun time. we did some for our tree and for all of the grandparents trees.

A Day Off

Many times when I say I have a day off, it simply means I'm not working at walmart that day. I know this is true for most moms. There is always the laundry, dishes, bathroom that needs cleaned. Not to mention the errands that need run. So much to do in our busy lives how many of us actually do take a day off.

Mostly my days off are relaxing to me though. I get to work on stuff that I enjoy and that brings me joy. How many people can say that. I would do this all of the time if it would pay the bills, but alas I shall keep working at walmart to pay the bills and doing this in my spare time.

So what exactly did I do today. Well to start I ran over to a friend's house to grab her picker and some gates that she no longer needed. Then off to the bank and a quick trip to the post office to check on a package. Back to the farm and get started on barn stuff after a quick lunch.

In the barn we started with regular chores. That involved trying to find a lamb's mom. Poor little guy had been running around all day yesterday and we couldn't tell who his momma was. This part actually just involves a lot of sitting and watching. Still can't find momma. Well we'll give it a couple more hours. Keep going with chores.
Now it's time for shearing. We decided to try to get 8 to 10 sheep shorn every week. Not that outrageous of a goal, but it takes time. Started setting up for shearing and getting all the stuff together. We got 12 done today so not that bad of a day. Even marked a couple fleeces to take a look at later for Maryland Sheep and Wool show. While shearing I was still watching the lamb to find momma and she did finally come up and claim her lamb. I got them moved into one of the lambing pens and made sure she had hay, water, and a feeder for corn tomorrow.

After shearing we came inside and I got to play around with the picker. That nifty thing makes quick work of a fleece. I much prefer it to picking by hand. Then after picking up the kids from grandma's house it was back out to the barn. A fire was started to burn trash(had to be watched), and I started pitching manure in the only empty lamb pen. My goal is to get them all cleaned within the next 3 weeks. We'll see how it goes.