# Prepping fleeces? How good is good enough?



## hotzcatz (Oct 16, 2007)

Well, there's now too many fleeces here for me to spin. I've gone way, way past SABLE. (Stash Acquisition Past Life Expectancy) So, in order to make some headway into this stash, there are folks who have FIBER MILLS! I can _send some away_ and it will come back as yarn! Hmm, of course, that's just moving it from one stash to the next, but at least progress will have been made.

Most of the fleeces are some sort of Merino, at least, that's what the fellow with the sheep says they are. The fleeces are very raw, he just shears them and that's that. So, how far do I have to pick the fleece to get it ready to send to a mill?

There's skirting it, that's easy enough. There's picking out the second cuts, that's easy enough. Then there's VM. Tedious, but manageable, the fleeces don't have all that much VM. HOWEVER, (don'tcha know there's always a "however"?) so, anyway, HOWEVER, the fellow leaves his sheep out in the rain and weather and the tips are all dirty and stained. Some of the tips are weak, possibly from mildew (it's rainy where he keeps his sheep), all the fleeces seem to have dirty tips on them. 

Is this typical of sheep? How dirty is too dirty? What does one do with fleeces with dirty tips? Are they cut off? Can they be spun into the yarn? It could always be dyed, I suppose, if the tips caused it to discolor.

I took one fleece, this is a lamb's wool from one of the market lambs and washed it. This is what it looks like afterwards:








Is this useful wool or is it compost?

Also, by the time the dirty tips are pulled off, it is less than 3" long, that's not good for commercial mills, is it?









There is a dozen of the lamb's wool fleeces and probably another dozen adult Merino fleeces, nine or ten colored Merino fleeces and a few Clun Forest fleeces as well as some Dorset fleeces. I was thinking of getting all of each type of sheep together and trying to process each of the different types into a batch to be sent to a mill somewhere.


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## frazzlehead (Aug 23, 2005)

Actually, for a merino, I don't think those tips are all that unusual... The finer fleeces need help opening the tips so they come clean. If you tug the tips open then wash again, does it come clean?

As for the mill... That's way cleaner than what the mill normally gets. You want it well skirted: no mucky bits, no belly wool, and do a sort by length, so you get a pile of wool that's all similar, that'll get you the best product. Any thing with a lot of VM goes to compost ... Basically, just send the best stuff off - they will scour it and get it clean, but VM just gets spread throughout if its there, usually. 

That photo you asked if it was compost made me say out loud "no!!" That's very soft wool and looks nice from the photo anyway. 

As for length, most mills have a maximum length (gets tangled in the equipment if its too long) but anything more than an inch and a half makes fine yarn if it can be spun accordingly. (Shorter, even, but that depends on what kind of equipment is involved).


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## Maura (Jun 6, 2004)

My understanding with washing is that your fleece is never so clean that they won't wash it again at the mill. However, if you presoak you'll loose a lot of weight from the dirt coming out. If you prewash then you loose more weight from loosing more dirt and lanolin. So, even if you end up paying for a wash at the mill, it will still cost you less because they amount you pay is based on the weight of the wool when it gets to the mill, not when it leaves.


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## hotzcatz (Oct 16, 2007)

Ah, I didn't pre-soak the wool, perhaps that will help?

We have solar hot water and it had been sunny for about a week when the wool was washed so the water was hotter than you could put your hand in. Dunno exactly how hot, though. How hot is hot enough?

It was washed in the washing machine. The tub is filled with hot water and double the amount of laundry soap. In this case it's a liquid detergent labeled "Xtra". There is also Costco's "Kirkland Signature Detergent" available. It claims to be an "industrial" grade, would that be better? It's a dry detergent, I dunno if that makes much difference. Anyway, the tub is filled with water and detergent, then the fleece is pushed into it. Sometimes I'll let the machine agitate for about five seconds, but this is Merino which is something that would felt if it could so not much agitation. I push it under the water with a stick. Then I let it sit for about half an hour to an hour, spin the water out, take out the fleece, wipe out the tub and then fill with rinse water and push the wool in.

Should it be washed with two soap washes and then a rinse?

Thanks for your post, Wind in Her Hair, it's very helpful. I'll pick out as much VM as possible and soak overnight and see what happens with the next fleece. 

Frazzlehead, I'm sure tugging on the tips would help, but I really don't want to fuss with each and every tip on those fleeces, it would take forever. There has got to be an easier way than that. If anything, cutting the tips off with the horse clippers might work. I'll see if the other fleeces are as bad as the one I started with. There's about ten of them and I just grabbed one. In the picture, the wool in the background had the tips pulled off, the fiber is fine enough that tips can be pulled off. I don't know if it is a tender fleece or just tippy or what, I don't have enough experience to know what "normal" is yet. Is it normal to be able to pull the tips off? I'm prepping them to be sent to a mini-mill and then most of the yarn that comes back will be sold. I'll use some but maybe about 10%, I can only knit so much and these sheep keep making more wool.

Yup, you're right, Maura. The mill even washes the angora fiber that gets sent to them. However, they do charge according to the incoming weight of the fiber and the Merino loses a lot of it's weight after the first wash. Lanolin, I'd guess? But if I pre-wash the wool, that will cut down on the processing costs by quite a bit, I hope. We have solar hot water and solar electricity and water isn't expensive here so it's not all that expensive for me to wash it here. 

This is the mini-mill in Pennsylvania that spins my English angora bunny fiber into lovely yarn. 40% locally grown in Hawaii English angora, 40% Merino (they've been providing the Merino, so far) and 20% silk. I know what "normal" is for bunny fiber. Clean, absolutely no VM, loose soft fibers, no matts, no snarls, just a big bag of floof. That is what my "normal" is as far as what to send to the mill so these sheep's fleeces aren't anywhere near the "normal" that I'm used to.

I have a big bag (5#?) of bunny fluff ready for the mill and I was hoping to send some Merino with it so the "local Hawaii fiber" content of the yarn would be 80% instead of merely 40%. However, the bunny fluff is gray and the Merino lamb's wool is white so I dunno if it would be a good match. The mill has black Merino available (although I don't know the source, if it's U.S. Merino or if it's dyed black or natural black, but I can ask) so I'm thinking for the gray bunny fluff to have that spun with the black Merino and maybe the silk as well. It would be a blend of white silk fibers, gray bunny fibers and the black Merino. Should turn out a really soft somewhat shiny and silky feeling heathery gray color.

After the gray bunny fluff goes, then I'll start working on a batch of white bunny fluff, although half of it is still on the bunnies. That can go with the white Merino lamb's wool which would be an 80% local fiber yarn. If I could find someone growing silkworms around here it could perhaps get to 100% local fibers although there's still not a local mill so it would have to go to the mainland to be spun.


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## frazzlehead (Aug 23, 2005)

Sorry for the confusion ... what I meant was that if they will come open when you tug on them, then the wool is fine to go *as it is*. Often people want to test a fleece and see if it's "worth sending away" - in which case you process a little bit of it all the way by hand yourself. But if you scour and wash it all, then what're you paying the mill to do? 

The *only* thing I did when I sent stuff to the mill was sort it: really nasty (straight to compost), pretty nasty (also ended up in compost) and fairly clean. I poofed it open a bit with my hands as I sorted - grab a handful, stretch it open between my fingers, shake out the VM that would fall out, check it for length and see if it matched everything else, dump it in the "to go to the mill" pile.

That's IT. It's way muckier than bunny fluff - because wool can tolerate the harsh cleaning methods used by the mill, and bunny fluff can't. The mill will soak it in heavy duty scouring soaps, super hot water, etc etc and fluff it open with carders that will open those tips. They may even run it through a picker before washing it, to get it opened up before they wash, so the tips come clean. That's essentially what we were recommending - only the hand-processed version of it. But if you are sending it off, DON'T do all that yourself! Most mills charge a flat rate from whatever you send - so you want to get as much of the gross stuff out, so you aren't paying for stuff to be mailed to them then thrown away - but other than that, well, that's why we send stuff to the mill, eh? 

If you're gonna do more than that yourself, you might as well do all of it yourself. 

And if you're gonna do more yourself, use SOAP not DETERGENT on your wool. You'll probably get better results. I like Sunlight dish soap, actually. And I wouldn't risk spinning out merino - too easy to felt wool in the machine ... I'll spin Southdown or Hampshire, they are nearly impossible to felt, but nothing that felts readily, it's just too risky. 

Personally, I would soak the fleeces in water outside for a day or two, then lay them out to dry in the sun (just dump 'em on the grass and let 'em drain, then flip and fluff a few times over the next day or two until they are dry). Makes it easier to do the fluffing/sorting thing if it's had at least a bit of a rinse. Once it's good and dry, then sort through it by hand, fairly quickly, just to make sure you keep the best stuff for the mill. Anything with really nasty long stuck tips, put that aside, but if you can fluff it mostly open, then it's probably fine to go as it is. If the tips are REALLY breaking off, then I would put that chunk in the 'not to the mill' pile.

My experience with merino is limited though, so I might be out to lunch here.


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## dhodge (Jul 20, 2013)

Ihave limited experience, but i had some ends like that and I poured some hydrogen peroxide in the was and the rinse water, it cleaned them right up. Some of them looked a little yellow for the length of time they were discolored, I dyed that wool and got fantastic results.


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## hotzcatz (Oct 16, 2007)

Okay, I guess I'm spoiled by bunny fluff and trying to get the wool up to bunny standard. 

I'll see if there's a mill out there that charges by finished weight instead of incoming weight. The Merino has a lot of lanolin and it's pretty heavy. I should weigh a fleece before and after washing, but a lot of the weight goes away after a wash.

Okay, I'll pick over a couple of fleece. Then set them out to soak for a couple days and dump in a big slug of hydrogen peroxide for the soak. Then soak them in really hot water in the washer in dish soap and not detergent. Spin them out (the Merino doesn't felt if it's just spin and not agitate), let them dry and send them in.

I did try letting raw fleece ferment once and that was a stinky mess and won't do that again. Maggots. Ick! But letting them sit for just a day or two shouldn't reach that stage.


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## Wind in Her Hair (Jul 18, 2002)

frazzlehead said:


> Actually, for a merino, I don't think those tips are all that unusual...


you make a very valid point - I was comparing my experience with a greasy Cormo fleece and other fleeces I have washed - but NONE of them merino. :clap::bow:

merino is not in my sphere of experience


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## frazzlehead (Aug 23, 2005)

I'd do it the other way ... Soak, dry, then pick. Sorting is much easier after the fleece has had some time in the water ... Especially greasy dirty ones!


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## Callieslamb (Feb 27, 2007)

I am not very experienced with greasy fleeces either...but the one I did was much harder to get clean. I finally dried it and teased all the locks apart to get the tips to loosen up. It worked easily. I do all my fleeces this way too when the tips are bad. I pull them apart from the cut end until the goo on the tip comes apart. Usually, once I split it, it comes clean quickly. 

I'd like to know more about the hydrogen peroxide though. Do you rinse it out? Did it make the fleece feel dry and prickly? I made the mistake of using washing soda once...and ammonia once. Maybe the greasy fleeces need a more heavy duty cleaner?


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## hotzcatz (Oct 16, 2007)

I haven't had any fleece in water in the past few days so no new updates on prepping Merino. We've had some cloudy weather so the solar hot water isn't so hot and when it's cloudy the fleece doesn't dry either. Weather actually matters for fleece prep around here. It's also been too windy to pick fleece outside so I haven't even been able to do that. My DH is good about fiber all over the house, but picking a dozen fleeces on the kitchen table would probably be a bit much.

However, some progress has been made! Two local yarn stores really want to buy the angora/Merino/silk yarn already made from the first batch that went to the mill. (That batch had mill provided Merino, though, so I didn't have to prep any sheep's fleece, just bunny fluff) One yarn shop bought the samples with labels that I had with me, the other wants the rest of it (as soon as the labels are on it), so the market is enthusiastic. Instead of trying to sell it in a non-yarn shop (where it is now), I'll just take it over to the yarn shops which makes more sense. They also want placards which show the "fiber producers" with their names and pictures, so cute bunny pictures to go with the yarn. That should be fun. They want to make a display of "local fiber" but they didn't want a store bunny. I think it'd be cute to have a bunny hopping about the store, but they weren't so keen on the idea.

And, another interesting development is all of a sudden my DH who up until now has been sort of "fiber, spinning, knitting, - that's your stuff" (i.e. boring!) is now becoming really interested in getting fleece prepped for the mill. Maybe he didn't think the yarn would sell or something? Now that the yarn stores want it and are willing to pay money for it, he finds it much more interesting. Hmpf! Oh well, maybe I'll teach him to knit someday.

Does anyone have a favorite mill they use? I've found a few and they all seem to have different requirements on minimum lot size, whether they will blend fibers, turn around time, etc. etc.


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## Wind in Her Hair (Jul 18, 2002)

I am getting ready to send a couple of fleeces to Blue Hills Fiber Mill- I know a gal that got back some roving from them and was very very pleased- and the price was definitely right. 

http://www.bluehillsfibermill.com/


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## DragonFlyFarm (Oct 12, 2012)

Congrats on your yarn sales! How exciting! 
I've only processed a couple Rambouillet and one Merino, but have had good luck with a cold water presoak. I let it sit in a cold water bath for 1 - 2 days, let drain overnight and then scour as usual. Really seems to help. I still have discolored ends on parts of the fleece, but it gets rid of the stiff cruddy stuff.


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## hotzcatz (Oct 16, 2007)

Thank you for that link, WIHH! They look like a lovely mill and they can do much higher percentages of angora than most mills. I'll see about sending some fiber to them. Maybe just skirt those Merino fleeces and send them on. Have the mill spin up the angora separately or perhaps blended with some of the Merino. A three ply fingering with about 50% angora/ 50% Merino should be nice. Stretchy yet really soft.

I'll dump several of those Merino fleeces into a cold water soak with a splash of peroxide (as well as perhaps a tiny bit of "Mrs. Stewart's Laundry Bluing" and let them sit for a couple of days. Then hope for sunny weather for really hot water and then run them through the washer. Dry, box and send. 

The yarn stores bought quite a bit of the yarn but there's still a bit left for the other yarn store over in Hilo. I think it should be made up into smaller skeins which will help them sell it since they don't rely on tourist sales but to folks who live in a service based economy. (i.e. local folks who don't have a whole lot of money)

But there's the usual zillion other things that are supposed to get done around here which cuts into the fiber projects. Construction seems starting up again so now there's drafting to do. Urgh. Although, technically, I suppose that's my "real" job and fiber is just a side line. But it's such a fun side line! Maybe eventually, I'll be a yarn producer first and draftsperson second. Does anyone here make their entire living from fiber?


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