Bathtime

I was recently gifted a Ryeland fleece by a friend. She has a few animals and had never done anything with the fleece before. I've encouraged her to start spinning and shown her how to get started.

On my side I have never been faced with a full raw fleece before so have been stalling a little bit till the weather improved and until I had time to have a look at it. Friday was dry so it was spread out on the back lawn and pulled apart into manageable chunks. The more icky bits have been removed and the rest put back in a bag for washing in chunks on dry days. Now don't be too impressed - on the advice of Knit1Girl1 I've been washing this in the machine in laundry bags and spreading it out to dry. Then I'm carding by hand (which is taking forever!) and will soak/wash again once it's been spun.

It's and interesting project to say I've done it but I'll be staying with all the lovely clean and dyed fibre in my stash in the long term. Maybe a drum carder would change my mind...