What did I do over Labor Day weekend? I labored. I worked for pay on Saturday. And then the next two days, I scoured two fleeces and uprooted (with much assistance from my husband) several small trees growing in flowerbeds that have been neglected since Ida quashed all my new homeowner enthusiasm four years ago when she uprooted a huge oak and ruined the lovely shaded back yard. Four years later, the fence is finally properly fixed and the depression has mostly lifted.

Sunday’s fleece was the smaller of the two white Gulf Coast Native fleeces I got from CM Farms. This was the first time using the newly acquired immersion heater for scouring wool, which made a HUUUGE difference in reducing the effort required to complete the task. It was so much easier to control the water temperature, and more importantly, it did not require me to boil water or haul water from inside the house.

I started with the entire fleece in a delicates bag and by the third scour ended up with the entire fleece directly in the water because I could see how dirty the tips still were at that point. So, I googled and watched a video about to rub the locks from base to tip under water to manually loosen the dirt. Well, I gave this a bit of a try before realizing that this is not a workable solution for nearly 3 pounds of wool in a 5 gallon bucket. I gave it a fourth scour, rinsed it twice (because I had gotten a little too enthusiastic with the Unicorn Power Scour), and then left it to soak overnight.

Monday’s fleece was an even smaller black Icelandic. With the bag, it weighed 1.22 lb. Minus the bag, that left 0.78 lb of wool and vegetative matter. I gave this fleece two scours and rinses. As for the VM, it’s just excessive. Overall, the fleece is pretty gross. It has what looks like scurf in some places. I’m glad I only paid $8 for it, but the postage pushes it into the not worth it category. Except as a lesson learned.

While these two fleeces dried, my husband and I continued the mission we had begun the day before: to root out the junk trees that had invaded our yard over the past 4 years and cut down the half-dead trees that had been intentionally planted.

Two days of scouring raw fleeces taught me that extra dirty wool may not be worth the effort and reduced cost. As for what happens with these fleeces, I will wait for my hackle and comb set to arrive to see it that helps at all.