Adventures In Wool Washing

So the last time I purchased a raw fleece and the difficulty began, I swore I would never get a raw fleece again. It's kind of like childbirth, it's painful during the delivery, but once you see that sweet little baby face, you forget all about the pain. Processing a raw fleece is kinda like that.

The fleece is a beautiful, crimpy Cormo fleece.



Little did I know how greasy and dirty this fleece would be. I purchased some special wool scour just for scouring raw fleece and it just didn't cut the grease. Two washes and several rinses later and the fleece was still sticky from the grease and still dirty. Yup, I even used original Dawn for multiple washings adding almost boiling water, all without success.

Then I heard the host of the Manic Purl Podcast talk about using Tide Free to clean a fleece. No fragrances, no dyes, no phosphates -- I had to give it a try.





Wow what a difference! My fleece went from a dingy light brown to perfectly white. See that yucky water. To think that all that was in the wool. And the grease? Completely gone. It still took a couple of washings and lots of rinses to fully get the fleece clean.

Here's the result after flicking.



Ahh, nice white, flicked locks, ready for spinning. Yeah, it almost makes me forget about the pain.