Open Inquiry 3: Washing

My friend Jules came over to my place with a black plastic garbage bag full of sheep’s wool I had given her from the farm I worked at about a year and a half ago. It had been sitting in her studio for all of that time and as we poured it out on a blanket on my kitchen floor, we felt out of our depth.

1. We had a LOT of wool, most of the videos we watched they washed about a quarter of what we had.

2. We were missing some key pieces of equipment (Laundry bags to hold it, buckets so you don’t have to pour the water down the drain, and the correct cleaning product)

We weighed out the wool; we had over a kilogram of it! We decided to just use my bathtub and clean all of it at once and leave the dying for another day. We figured it was best to get the nasty cleaning part done for all of it and then we’d have a lot of wool to work with later on. We read a little more into the cleaning product and came to the conclusion that dawn dish soap would do the trick. The main goal of the soap is to remove the lanolin, which is a kind of greasy wax that coats the wool to keep the sheep dry, so we figured dawn would be okay. I felt my brain go off on a tangent of collecting the lanolin to give to a friend of mine who creates natural body and hair care products but decided tackling the wool situation was enough for one day.

Here is a photo of my bathtub after filling it with the wool, some dawn and water. Although some videos showed people used their hands to mix and wring out the wool to clean it, others warned against this so we played it safe and only ever gently pushed the wool under the water. The dawn worked really well and each cycle to water got clearer. We ended up needing to do 6 cycles of filling and emptying the bathtub. Throughout each cycle, Jules and I chatted away as we picked out straw, seeds and unmentionable things from the wool. We took a coffee (and smell) break and got some sunshine too.

After about 4 hours we felt that the wool was as clean as it was going to get. Removing the rest of the debris and fibres in it will come later. We hung the wool for another hour while the sun lasted and aired out my apartment. We felt really proud of our efforts and started brainstorming what we’re going to do with this much wool. Reflecting on this process and watching as my portable fan continues to try to dry an absurd amount of wool, I feel both nostalgic and grounded. I didn’t realise at the time that I gave the wool to Jules almost 2 years ago that I would one day be cleaning it in order to create my own yarn. At the time I had just begun learning to crochet and didn’t even really make the connection between the yarn I was learning with and sheep’s wool. I am reflecting on my personal growth since then and feeling proud of myself. At the time, I was burnt out by farming and finding it hard to appreciate the work anymore, unsure of what my next step would be. 2 years on, I am working toward becoming a teacher and feeling overwhelmingly grateful for my years of hard farm labour and love. I miss my sheep there and am glad I have a physical keepsake of a really precious time in my life.

Next on the agenda is processing the raw wool into felting material and yarn! I can’t wait.