Fiber Monday - Washing fleece

I crossed some items off my imaginary weaving/spinning to do list this week. First, I finished plying the 2-tone yarn for my gradient shawl I'm planning. I am really, really happy with how it is looking. Here are the first two colors done:

Then I finished spinning one bobbin of the navy and have one bobbin more to spin.

I also finished measuring my warp for my next weaving project and have started to sley the reed which will help keep all the ends separated and in line. This project has 460+ ends which makes it both the biggest project I've done plus I am using the thinnest thread I have ever woven with. 

Here is all four sets of warp on the lease sticks (which keep everything in order) and on the stand so I can sley the reed. 

I was relieved to get to this point. This is only my fourth warp and my first to do entirely on my own from start to finish. It still doesn't feel easy or automatic. Here is what it looked like when I left it today. There are four sections to this warp. I have finished the first (the group on the right) and have started the second. 

Finally, the big accomplishment for the week. I washed the three full fleeces that I have had kicking around my studio for months. I had put off doing something with them because I didn't like any of the ways I had tried for washing them. None of them were efficient enough to do large amounts. I was complaining to J. about this and he came up with a way I could it more easily.

This is the side of the house outside the utility room. J. got a hose which can be attached to the sink (thus giving me the hot water that I need) and which has a lever so I can turn the water off and on at the hose end so I don't have to keep running back and forth into the house. The other added benefit is that this side of the house is in deep shade and there are no plants here that I care about. (There is a lot of poison ivy, however.) This means I can empty the bins onto the ground without worrying about damaging anything. And there is real cause for worry with this. The fleece start out very dirty and then there is the dissolved lanolin which you don't want down you pipes.

The set-up:

An example of exactly how dirty fleece can be. This was just from the first cold water soak.

Then I take the fleece out and it drains in another bucket for a bit while I wash out and refill the bins with hot water which dissolves the lanolin.

Eventually, after doing this several times depending on the state of the fleece, you end up with nice clean fleeces.

The other piece to solving the fleece washing puzzle was figuring out how to dry them all. I got this idea from a woman who has a YouTube channel. This is an herb drying rack, but it is perfect for fleece.

I filled this up. You can see the fleece inside.

When I check it this afternoon there were still some wet parts, so it needs to dry some more. I also think one fleece was so heavy in lanolin that I'm going to need to wash it a couple more times before it can be used. It just didn't feel right as I was fluffing everything up. But one fleece is far easier than three, so it should just be an hour or so of work instead of the five hour extravaganza that this was. 

Next spring when I buy more fleece (which you and I both know is something I will be doing), I'm going to wash them one at a time as I purchase them. This was a bit much.