Wool Preparation Part III

I am just finishing washing up some bits and pieces of the four fleeces that I bought a few weeks ago and it will be all cleaned. I did not get as much out of the fleeces as I hoped due to the amount of the waste but at least I have some that I can start to spin. Which will put me in good shape next fall.

In the past, I have got a black fleece and blended it with a white one to produce gray. A fair number of my rugs are gray included this one which I did last fall. It takes a lot of carding to blend two colours together to make a relatively consistent colour. This rug is much larger than the one that I usually do (42” X 64”) and I am not too sure what I am going to do with it. But I really like it.

One of the four fleece I bought this time is an interestingly coloured gray fleece that has a range of grays and whites in it. I am going to gently card it, trying to avoid too much blending, so that the various shades remain. It could be interesting.

I have also purchased a lot of Acid dye, which I used a few years ago and then again last year. It is sometimes nice to work with more vibrant colours than one can get by blending black and white wool. In this picture you can see the range of my weaving. Most of the rugs are approximately 30" X 42"

The two items in the top right hand are baby blankets woven using a variation of a colonial overshot pattern. I have two more that need the edging sewn on etc.