Fleece washing

Friday evening was our pizza and movie night. We watched Serendipity. A terrific romantic comedy! Guess we're on a bit of John Cusack bender lately.

We make our own pizza. I start the dough on Thursday evening. I come home from work, add more ingredients, knead the dough and let it raise for an hour while we get the remainder of pizza fixings ready.







Rani asked about processing the finn fleece.

I washed a pound of it last weekend. It was time to do another pound today.

I take it out on the deck - it's best to do this outdoors.

Spread it out, and remove the hay, vegetable matter (VM) and the little bits of sheepy poop.
Be sure to toss them downwind. You don't really need to ask how I discovered this, do you?





I pull off large pieces of the fleece and put them into a mesh bag.











Actually, I have two mesh bags...











I filled my sink with very hot water. I even added some boiling water to each side. I added a good sized squirt of dish soap.

I added the bags of fleece and let them soak for roughly a half an hour. No agitation or stirring!


I let the water out of the sink, roll the bags up and gently squeeze out the excess water.



I put them into my washer and spin them out. Be sure to turn off the water to the washer!



I returned them to more very hot water in the sink for a rinse. My first rinse was still quite muddy, so I gave the fleece two rinses. I added a shot of vinegar (yeah, I almost wrote "I added a shot of vodka") to the final rinse water to help clear off any remaining soap residue.





After a final spin in the washer, I took the fleece back out to the deck to dry. I have an old window screen that I set the fleece on to dry.












Then it was time to sit on the deck, crack open a beer, and listen to Prairie Home Companion.