If you are a new spinner, you may be given a fleece. When your fleece arrives home, usually in a feed bag, it may be dirty. What follows should be done outside and do wear rubber gloves when cleaning raw fleece. Once you have unrolled your fleece you may decide it is very dirty. If it is very dirty, you need to make a decision as to whether it is worth going to all the trouble of preparing it to spin. If you think it might be, read on.
First, unroll your fleece. It will be rolled and the neck end will have been used to secure the roll together. Once flat, with the cut side underneath and the uncut side uppermost, pull off and discard the mucky edges. This is called skirting.
These edges can be used on the garden in a bean trench, on the compost heap, at the bottom of flower pots or placed around precious plants as a slug deterrent. There may be bits of straw, grass and all sorts in the fleece which you want to keep. Remove as much as possible. If there is too much VM (vegetable matter) you may decide that it is just too much trouble to proceed. Don’t worry if you think this, just discard the fleece and tell yourself that next time you will be more careful before saying “Yes”, to the farmer. It is ok, we all get carried away with enthusiasm at times.
If you now have a fleece that is clean-ish, feel the fleece and then rub your fingers together. The oil that you can feel is lanolin. The right amount of lanolin is good and is helpful when hand spinning but too much lanolin can make woolly processes difficult. Some sheep breeds have more lanolin than others. You can spin your fleece now; it is called ‘spinning in the grease’. If you spin at this stage you are spinning raw fleece and doing so will not harm your spinning wheel. However, most fleece is still dirty and we need to be careful regarding hygiene. Most spinners will wash their fleece. There are different schools of thought regarding washing fleece. Some say warm water, cold water, others say very hot water. Some say washing up liquid, some say plain water. I prefer washing up liquid and hot water. I leave the fleece in the water for 20 minutes and then pull it out and let it drain. It will be heavy so you may wish to work in stages a bit of fleece at a time. Do not let the water get cold as the lanolin will stick back onto the fibre and the aim is to wash some off. The water will be very dirty. Now rinse the fleece in plain hot water. BE VERY MINDFUL regarding temperature. The fleece will not stay fluffy it you change the water temperature. If you let the fleece become cold whilst it is draining then rinse the fleece in cold water. The key to keeping the fleece soft and fluffy and not FELTED is, NO agitation and no temperature shocks. You may need to wash the fleece more than once. If you are feeling a little nervous about the temperature, try washing in cold or slightly warm water with washing up liquid. You will gain confidence the more fleeces you wash. Bear in mind also that breeds vary in what they will tolerate during the cleaning process.
A SUINT (pronounced swint or sunt)
My favourite method of cleaning a fleece (at the moment) is by using a suint.
Once I have skirted the fleece and removed as much VM as I can summon up the patience to do, I use a black plastic dustbin and rainwater, (rainwater is important as it does not contain additives) filled to, two thirds full and placed in the sunniest spot that you can find. This is done in the warmer months of the year. Now pop the fleece in. You can gently push it down into the water with a stick. Now place the dustbin lid on firmly. Do not leave lidless or you will encounter all sorts of unwanted larvae. You can now walk away and let nature do its thing.
How long should the fleece stay in the suint?
The first time that you use the rainwater suint, the fleece should stay in the water for 7 days. With rubber gloves test to see if your fleece is ready. Take a small amount out of the water. You will see that the fibres easily fall away from one another. The water will be a muddy colour and it will smell. Do not be alarmed as the fleece once washed and dried will not smell like the suint. If your handful of fleece does not easily separate from the rest of the fleece in the water, leave it in the suint for one or two more days. Once the fleece is ready, take the fleece out of the suint and squeeze as much water back into the dustbin. The water is ready to use for the next fleece, which may only take 5 days to work its magic!
After just one wash your fleece should look like this. After 2 more washes in plain tap water and possibly a little washing up liquid, your fleece can be rinsed and dried, ready for the next stage. You may wish to card or spin your fleece now as you are ready to experience the loveliness of clean fleece.
Do let me know your experience of using a suint.