This
summer has been sometimes stormy and cool. I started a fire in my
wood stove the morning of July 4th
to take the chill off! Other times it has been delightful, sunny and
dry, and I've been able to get some yard work done. Then there are
the hot and muggy days, when it is hard to do anything, inside or
out.
We get more of those now than we used to. And with Vermont weather, we don't always know when. We get weather
from five different directions (seriously), and what we experience
depends on what gets here first and how it is modified by what gets
here second, third... etc.
So...
a nice July day, cool but clear sunny morning. Perfect for washing
one of the several fleeces waiting up in my storeroom (former
bedroom).
I
decide to do the Corriedale I was given a couple of years ago (it's
the gooiest, might as well get it out of the way). Now I make a fatal
(or nearly) decision. I decide to do the whole thing at one go.
Now
there are two factors at work here. This was off a ram sheep, and in
Corries the fleece varies in texture and length from one part to
another, so normally I'd sort the sections and do them separately and
spin them for different projects. But I am planning to use this and
another Corriedale I'd processed last year to weave a blanket
(someday), so I decide to let it mix together for texture.
The
other thing is that Corridales have big fleeces anyway. And this one
was huge. When I unrolled it, it was too big to lie flat in my
bathroom. So I sort-of broke it up into similar sections, eight in
all, and set to, filling my buckets with free hot water.
My
process involves four five gallon buckets set in my tub. The nice
thing is that on a sunny summer day, my solar hot water panel provides lots
of very hot water, so I can rotate the buckets out and always have
fresh hot water for washing and rinsing. The only hitch in this is
that when I go to dump the cooling water (it makes fantastic
fertilizer), I have to haul the buckets down a flight of stairs from
my deck. My house is on a hillside, so the back is an extra story off
the ground. That's ok most of the time: it's good exercise and the
buckets are empty on the return trip.
But
the cool morning morphed into a warm one. Then a hot one, and the
humidity rose with it. By noon the outside temp was close to 90F, and
the humidity matched. And because of the steamy bathroom and having
to go in and out, the house was just about as bad.
But
in for a dime, in for a dollar. I was determined
to get it done. With impressive efficiency if I do say so myself, I moved batch after batch
from bucket to bucket, emptied, refilled, drained and pressed water
from the batches of clean wool, and hung it from my clothesline and from my outside
rack.
Done.
I could have taken photos of that, but frankly, I didn't feel like
it. (The one here is from the last Corriedale, and the two storm photos below are from a storm last year.) My determination had turned into hot and sweaty and tired.
Stripped,
showered, dressed in dry, clean, loose, thin clothing. And looked
out at my lovely white fleece drying... as two huge thunderheads
moved in rapidly from the west and the south.
Dang.
Grabbed
my clothes basket, dropped the wool from the line into it. Put it in
the mudroom, and ran for the rack while a wall of rain moved closer.
I didn't even bother to take the fleece off: just folded the rack and
carried it upright into the house. I have an antique fan rack that
does not go outside, but sets up just fine in the foyer, and the rest
of the wool went onto that.
It
rained hard for about 15 minutes, and then the sun came out. Oh,
well. The air was still heavy with moisture, and more rain predicted for the night, so I figured the wool
could just stay where it was.
It
took two days to dry, the air was so damp. And then we had a nice
day, and it dried all the way. I began to comb it, which is something I enjoy doing.
It took a couple of days to comb half the fleece and fill a large box with nests, which was
enough at one go.
I started spinning. Because I was spinning
chunky, that only took part of one day. Let it set overnight, and
then I plied it. I do love the big bulky flier on my Matchless- eight ounce skeins at a go, more if I'm spinning fine.
Washed,
that big eight ounce skein is handsome. Not perfect, but it looks good. And I feel satisfied at a job done well enough.
I
still have a box of nests to spin. And half the bag of clean fleece to comb. I think when I get
done, between it and the other Corriedale, and some miscellaneous
chunkies I've done over the years, I'll just about have enough for my
blanket.
(No, I don't have a time schedule for getting it woven....)
 |
| A beautiful post-storm July evening. |
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