Here's a kicker for you . . . an Icelandic sheep fleece is going to set me back fifty bucks.  Plus, I have to buy carders.  That's another $60-80.  A spinning wheel will cost several hundred dollars.  Top that off with lessons and my total cost of a finished pair of mittens from a raw fleece will set me back about $800. 

No sane person would do this, right?  The other day, I found myself covered in manure, fuzz, lanolin and bits of hay.  I'm draining our already strained bank account and I'm probably going to end up with a pair of itchy mittens that one of my kids will loose on the school playground the first day it snows.  And then I find that the lamb fleece I'm washing is not long enough to be spun.  Chalk it up to a learning experience.  I now know how to wash fleece.

Carl Larsson - Little Girl at Spinning Wheel

Why am I still determined to see this project through?  It is a bit of the inherited stubborness?  Is it the historian in me?  I was actually dropped on my head as a child.  That would explain a lot.  A lot.

I eat steak.  It doesn't mean I would like to go out and shoot myself a cow, skin it, gut it, butcher it.  It's bad enough that when I want a pair of boot socks I grab a $20 skein of yarn and spend a week (or two) knitting a pair.  I can't count anymore the number of friends that wonder why I don't just run to the store and pick up a pack of socks for $10.

Why do we make cookies and cakes from scratch when we can buy a box and 'just add water'?

I have a bee in my bonnet to sheer the sheep and ride the fiber train all the way through to a finished product.  Actually, I'll just watch the sheering.  I'd like to think my great Icelandic amma is smiling down on me when she's probably laughing at me instead.

Crochet Frosting

Thank you for your gentle suggestions for me to get over myself.  I have an iPhone and iPad an a teeny tiny iBrain so I'll start posting pictures.  It was suggested by my good friend "Anonymous" that I have it repaired.  That's a great idea but not only am I a Knitter with a capital K, but I'm also Lazy.  We'll see.  I may get desperate.

Here is what I've been working on:

I have a family room that is all beige and pale yellow.  Snore.  It needed a little color, so along with the Ripple blanket from hell, I am going to be so crafty and cover these cheap IKEA pillows with crochet frosting.  I mean, look at it.  Isn't she a beaut?  The other side will have a different color scheme and stitch pattern.  Haven't decided yet.  It has to be painless and mindless.

If you're still JUST a knitter, I highly recommend you buy yourself a hook and start covering stuff in your home with crocheted yarn.  It's therapeutic. 

Words words words

I tend to avoid lengthy, wordy posts.  At the risk of making myself sound stupid or lazy, a lot of words intimidate me.  Blame it on ADD, lack of sleep, not much time . . . blah blah blah.  I prefer pictures; loads of them.  I see a page of words and my mind begins to grow fuzzy and tired.  

My camera is broken.  Someone dear to me dropped it in the lake.  We snatched it up, dropped it in a bag of rice and after two days we checked - it still worked!  Still does, but there is a water mark on the inside lens that makes all of my photographs look like there's some sort of ghostly apparition on the right side.

I hadn't realized how attached I was to that little camera.  She went with me everywhere.  I took shameless amounts of pictures - mostly of absolutely nothing interesting.  But the beauty of digital cameras is that no matter how 'untalented' you are, eventually you will capture a moment or frame something so right that it deserves to be uploaded, printed, blogged or mailed to Aunty. 

Sigh.

So for the next few months, I'll be posting with my iPhone and iPad pictures (poor me).   And I'm going to make a valiant attempt to start posting again.  There is much to share and so much more to knit and crochet.

Love to all - get your blog on!

Here's a smile for you.

Scrap Pile

I spent my entire Saturday up to my elbows in warm, soapy lanolin water.  If you're just tuning in, I was given a bag of lamb's wool - fresh off the lamb.  The fleece was dirty. . . as all fleece off the farm is, so I'm told.  I wouldn't know.  I am a suburban gal.  I was able to divide the fleece into workable sections and I began my washing experiment.   I have NEVER done anything like this.  I buy my yarn.  I buy finished, clean (with the exception of Noro, which I swore I'd never use again), pretty yarn.  From a store.

But this was genuine, stinky, farmy, dirty, lovely fleece.  I'll skip most of the details and just tell you that you should not rush this process.  And you can really truly do this at home, in your very suburban backyard with nothing more than plastic storage bins, some dish soap, a couple of dog kennels and a patient family.

Here is what I did:

1. SKIRT THE FLEECE - don't I sound professional?  I googled this and found a few, very helpful, websites that explained that "skirting" your fleece essentially means pulling/picking off all of the really yucky bits (chunks of, achem, manure) and short-haired pieces - or "second cuts".  Sometime the sheep is sheered within an inch or two of its flesh.  An inexperienced sheerer is probably nervous about clipping the poor sheep's skin.  After the first layer is removed, the sheerer goes in for the second sheer to remove the rest of the coat.  This is the "second cut".   You do not want the second cut.

 I separated the sheets of fleece the best I could an set them on a dog kennel so that the bits would fall to the ground as I worked over it.  That photo above shows some of the yucky bits that I pulled from the fleece.

An experience sheerer will get a nice thick cut down to the skin on the first pass.  You want this full fleece cut.  

My labratory was spread out over the yard, but you get the idea of how simple it was.  I ended up not using the rubber gloves.  Your hands will LOVE the lanolin.

In the end, I found that soaking the fleece longer in warm, slightly soaping water, would produce cleaner fleece.   So it went something like this:

1. Fill two plastic bins with hot water. 
2. Add fleece to one bin with a tsp. of dish soap.
3. Let soak for several hours (don't agitate - you'll felt it!)
4. Press water out of fleece and transfer to the clean water in the 2nd bin.  The water should be about the same temperature.  Swish around gently and let it soak while you refill the first bin with more warm water.
5. Squeeze water from fleece and soak in warm (soapy) water again.
6. Repeat these steps until the water begins to run clear.  You don't need to use soap every time.  You'll strip off all of the lanolin (which isn't necessarily a bad thing - in fact, I used enough soap that in the end, I has stripped most of the oil/smell from the wool).

Here is a photo of "before" and "after" a good long soak. 

Washing this stuff took all day.  And then . . . AND THEN. . . I brought a chunk of the fleece to a spinning expert who took one look and said, "You can't spin this." 

Not even kidding. 

Ugh.

Alas, all is not lost.  I learned how to wash my first fleece and I am not intimidated.  In fact, when I buy (or am gifted . . . ) my first real FIRST CUT fleece, I will have an idea of how to prepare it for the next step:

CARDING

. . . to be continued . . .

Baa Baa White Sheep

I have a bag of wool.  Yes.  A real, honest-to-betsey bag of wool.  A gal from my hubby's work heard that I knit.  And so did what makes perfect sense . . . she sheared her little lambs and now I have a hefty bag of dirty, stinking, manure covered, straw filled bag of wonder and magic. 

I'm not even sure where to start.  To be completely honest, I'm afraid to touch it.  I guess this is where the city girl gets off the train. 

Well.  I suppose the obvious thing to do would be to clean it as soon as possible.  But how, pray tell, does one wash a bag of fleece?  It's so. . . . so. . . unclean. 

To the internet . . .

. . . stay tuned. . .

ps.  my camera is broken.  BROKEN.  I'm lost in a world with no pictures to post.