The shearing experience continues

So I came home with two bags of fleeces, one more than the other. What the heck comes next?

Washing them. I put back some of the nasty bits of the alpaca that PJ was loading me with but as you can tell from the previous posts pics, she did get some snuck in. I did a quick trip to the Dollar Tree for some mesh laundry bags - $1 three 12x15 inch bags. I then had to clean out the buckets that had been used with the pond fish and sitting out on the back patio all winter. Then since Duffy had shown the amazing results of the apparently clean but really not OFFF alpaca I decided mine should be washed too. This is the pretty apricot colored stuff I had gotten in case you didn't see it back in September:


I loaded up three bags with the apricot stuff and then took some of the worst nasty bits stuff of the white and then put them in the two buckets with some Palmolive (its what they had at the Dollar Tree) and hot water and let them soak over night. Oh my! The apricot water was just as brown as the nasty bits water. So I ran lukewarm water over the apricot stuff and then filled up the bucket with more hot water and detergent and let it soak again overnight. The white stuff took a little bit more work before it got its second soak. PJ had mentioned something about burrs and the alpacas. I found what she was talking about - there were burrs in the nasty bits besides the usual cause of the nasty. There was also a lot more grass and grass seeds and hay in their as well. I picked and washed, picked and washed and had the fleece come out looking much better. Still a little bit of darker areas where the nasty bits had been but looking like something that could actually be used now.

I rinsed out the second really dirty buckets today and got the water to run cleanly through them. I'm cheating with the drying process - I'm using the drying rack in my dryer and have the white fleece in the mesh bags going through a cycle. Then I'll run the apricot through. I figured the white if there was a problem since it was the 'nasty bits' stuff could be a better write off if something happened than anything else. Plus I don't have drying racks to setup to try to dry them any other way efficiently.

I used the cat flicker brushes that I had to try and get the 'blobs' back into a spinning shape. This also allowed me to get more of the vm still left in. So here's the progression, the middle row of the collage shows the same pic twice (Picassa does that if you don't have enough to make the collage) showing the nasty bits prewashing. The top and bottom rows show pics of the nasty bits after they have been washed and coming from the dryer and then the combed 'fluff'.


ETA: While working more with the white alpaca cleaned nasty bit bags I'm finding a lot of dead flea bodies in the mix. I've but those bags into a separate bag and on hold to decide it I really want to put the effort into picking out the bodies and the vm still in there.

I finished sock #1 of the "Band Stoppin' Boot Sock". I did a short row heel and a star toe as deviations from Sharon's "Traffic Stoppin' Boot Sock" pattern. I'm planning on giving the socks to my sister Jennifer I think.

This morning there was snow on the ground and I got a few pics of it with the previously posted crocuses (they were just poking through the ground):


The Cascade Lizard Ridge Blanket is shown on Cascade Yarns 220 patterns page! (Scroll to the bottom!)

The fun just keeps rolling along....

I had a nice long chat with Ronda at Cascade Farms in Camas. She has some Icelandic sheep that are going to be sheared on Saturday and we're going to come help out and pick the fleece that we'd like to buy. We have a group that are coming from the Hillsboro area and others from the rest of Portland to take advantage of getting to see the fleece on the sheep and the great price she's selling them.

Tuesday night was the book signing for Kim Harrison's White Witch, Black Curse. Kim and her publishers have been having fun using titles that have kind of a Clint Eastwood theme going. There were also a lot of people that had bought her pre-tour t-shirt for the book and so that was a nice surprise for her. Brandon's noticed that a lot of women who write urban fantasy also have colored their hair red or are natural redheads. Interesting note. ;^)

While there I cast on a sock, but didn't ask her to hold it because it was only a couple rows long by then. I'd actually cast it on twice during the reading and Q&A time. I tried it with 60 sts and that looked too small so went with the suggest 72 sts. It seems too big while working it but seems to be working out and I have enough of a cuff that I can always turn it over. So the yarn is Stitchjones in the colorway "I'm With The Band" and I am doing her "Traffic Stoppin' Boot Sock" pattern so I'm calling the socks "Band Stoppin' Boot Socks":

Wednesday was a small spinning group with just Tiggywinkleknits and Shelia there with me at Starbucks. It was kind of nice but would have been great if the others had been able to make it. We were able to do some brainstorming of locations for WWKiP day. The problem is finding a location that doesn't require the Certificate of Insurance, still is fairly public but also has sources of food/restrooms as well as parking. We came up with a few more ideas and are working those.

Wednesday night there was the trip over to Haggen's for the PDX-Knit-Bloggers group. I took along the sock and made more progress there. The colors are spiraling around. There was also some coordination of carpooling for the Saturday event. Cool handspuns to fondle and some FOs to oohhh and aaah over - a great evening!

Thursday I ended up not doing the Insomnia knitting since my head felt like it might want to come down with a cold. I instead was standing at the scanner and working pages through the computer. I did get out to the Aloha Grange and met up with Lavendarknits for the grange meeting. Fun bunch of people! We were there to ask permission to use the grange for the Wednesday Westside Spinners. So that we could get it without paying the $100 for 4 hour rental fee, Tammy and I became grange members. So we found a new home for the group!

The great part of using the grange is that we are able to have other area members with small children be able to come out and spin because they will be comfortable letting their kids play while we spin there. We can also bring in a coffee pot and make our own coffee! Since we're also meeting during lunch hour we can bring in food too. We just have to clean up the area that we'll be using.

The other fun note is that the grange secretary is a Tiggywinkleknits blog reader. One of the posts had mentioned our search for a permanent home and she was thinking that the grange would be a great place for it and there we were asking that same day. Great minds think alike. ;^) She'd also like to learn how to spin so will try to drop in during work some day.

Here's hoping that today's sunshine will carry over into tomorrow for the sheep shearing!!