Sunday, April 3, 2016

Reinventing the Wheel

I washed another of the fleeces.  This time, I rummaged through a box of fabric that I have and found this, the world's biggest sieve...

I don't know why I even have this thing.  Someone gave it to me years ago and I thought it was a set of shear curtains.  I stuck it in a box and forgot about it. When I opened it up, I found that it must be a bed net.  Either that or a curtain for a whale-size window.

This is why I have trouble throwing things like this out.  I haven't touched this for at least ten years and if you had reminded me of it a couple of weeks ago, I would have gotten rid of it.  Now, here it is, useful at last.

I think this is a better fleece, there is certainly a lot of it and no hair anyway.  The wool seems fairly clean except for some of the tips.  I don't know if that is normal or if I should have washed it a 4th time.

Aside from dog beds, what I would like to make are some bed pillows.  I don't want to use batting though because I want soft, fluff-able pillows similar to down - without all the dust mites.  I have seen this referred to as wool bolas or, of felted wool that looks like hundreds of small "feathers".  I have not figured out how to do that yet, and so far, YouTube and Google have been no help.

I did take my dog brushes to some of the wool just to see what would happen.  It does fluff up nicely and helps get rid of some of the debris.  It would also take me several months to get through all of this with my puny little brush.  After about five minutes of that, I start thinking that I must have adult onset ADHD and maybe I need to be medicated - or find something else to do.

Having the right tools for the job makes such a difference.  Not having the right tools makes any molehill of a job into a mountain.

For now, this fleece still isn't fully dry and I have it hung up near the wood stove.   It looks kind of comfy anyways.

This fleece, which would be Tunis or Tunis crossed with Blue-faced Leicester (I think), pretty much all looks like this...


6 comments:

  1. it's an interesting process to be sure. I bet it will make great stuffing for the dog beds

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  2. The fleece does look very comfy!

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  3. I wish you would send some pictures to Michelle at Boulderneigh, I have her address... and she could tell you about the fleeces.

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  4. That does look like a better fleece. And I think its clean. Those ends are fine IMHO.

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  5. Love your sieve.

    That one is a spinnable fleece and somebody would probably pay good money for it. Looks like a lot of it too.

    I'll be interested to hear whether a fluffy pillow will stay fluffy once you start to lay your head on it. If I had to guess [I don't but I will anyway :) ], I would think the coarser the wool the better for this. I would think the lighter wools (like BFL) will compact pretty quickly. Maybe a good Cheviot-type is what you need. Did you have one of those? They've got lots of crimp (think loft), they're kind of cushy to the touch and I don't think they felt easily. They feel kind of soft, but spongy. Hmm. This deserves some research...

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