Here are Corriedale Sheep wearing the little coats that keep their wool clean. If you don’t have these coats on your Corriedales, and the wool gets stinking filthy, there is still hope that homeschoolers will buy the smelly fleece on eBay when they do a unit study on Sheep and Weaving. But personally I would invest in the coats.
Well, the dying of the stinky wool came off without a hitch… well, except for the unexpected colors. We did two natural dyes, bougainvillea and onion skin, in addition to purple and red Kool-Aid. The kids all broke up the bougainvillea flowers and we boiled them for 30 minutes.
We strained out the flowers and simmered the wool for another 30 minutes. We did the same with the Walmart onion skins. The night before dying I went in and cleaned up the yellow onion bins for the nice produce people at Wally’s World. I gathered a whole bag of free skins!
The Kool-Aid dyes we cooked in the microwave for 8 minutes with the wool and then let them cool to room temperature. Here are the masterpieces.
Guess which one was the hot pink bougainvillea? The yellow onion skin? The purple Kool-Aid? and the red Kool-Aid? Ok, the Kool-Aids were easy. But the other two are the opposite of what you’re thinking. The pale yellow one is the hot pink flowers and the deeper brown one is the onion skin.
So, why in the world did we do this? And what in the world did we learn? I figured out tonight that our wool is from a corriedale mixed sheep (whatever that is!). We learned that vinegar breaks down dye and makes it spread evenly. We discovered that pink flowers make pale yellow die…. go figure. The sheep and weaving unit is under the Godly character trait of Trust. Sheep really do have to trust the Shepherd, just as we trust our heavenly Shepherd. We also got this wool business out of our systems so as not to have to go through it again. Ever. Forever. Forever and eternity.
Actually, I’m addicted to pulling little balls of wool over my kitchen sink … it’s therapeutic. And I have about 50% of the smelly wool left to wash the pick. Yes, I’m considering it. Remember, people, I said THERAPEUTIC! And I fell in love with the brown dye from the onion and the passionate purple from the blue Kool-Aid. Sorry, Jennie. Now, to make a drop spindle and have at it.
I don’t know if Mary would have been much help, however, because this was not a little lamb. Yes, today the seven pound fleece arrived in the mail (thank you, eBay!)…. this is for our homeschool study of sheep and weaving, for those who aren’t in the know.
Can I just say that sheep stink and now I know why. They have their fuzzy coats on for a year while they lie in the dirt and grass and walk in the barnyard… and I don’t think they wipe after they you-know-what. I divided the wool into four semi-even pieces and bagged three of them for my fellow homeys. I proceeded to pick off the poopy ends of my 25% and threw them out. We picked out grass and hay and weeds and sticks and dirt and straw and twigs and … you get the picture.
That picture makes it look kind of clean… IT WAS NOT! So I proceeded to put the smelly pile of wool into the kitchen sink…. I’m on sink #6 of clean water… HELP! I don’t think this will ever be clean. I used L.O.C. (liquid organic cleaner) but there is so much dirt and stick and pieces of undesirable tidbits. Does anyone know what I should do?
The game plan is to dye it, card it, spin it and look at it…. I’m not sure if we will get to weaving or knitting at this point. Please email your fellow sheep farmer and ask how they get their fleeces clean for me, OK?
Did I mention that I’m a city girl who only went on dirt roads with grandpa when he went to the dump in Heppner, Oregon? (Read: A little clueless here.)
in the fiber weaving store on a field trip. Yes, we are still studying sheep and today’s journey led us to a spinning lady way across town. I figured the boys would be bored stiff, but I was looking forward to learning how this ancient craft is done. I’m prone to try any new fangled craft set before me, so now I’m itching to get my eBay fleece in the mail. The window to the wool spinning world was opened to me this afternoon…. and never shall I be the same again.
So here’s what I learned today from the weavers and spinners:
1. KoolAid can dye wool and it contains the same poisonous dye that is in RIT clothing dyes. Scary. (I did comment to the spinner at that point that it is similar to eating Saran Wrap… you have to eat twenty-four boxes to have traces of cancer.)
2. If everyone in the world would learn to spin and participated in spinning for ten minutes a day, there would be no wars. (Gandhi taught all his followers to spin….. on the flip side, Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” hhhmmmmmm.)
3. Bright HOT pink bougainvillea when boiled, dyes white wool yellow. Go figure. Here is bougainvillea, for those unfamiliar with this gorgeous flowering desert vine. (And that’s my first published book too…. please go read excerpts and order one at www.LindaCrosby.com)
3. You do not eat with a Navajo fork. It is strictly used to bat down the hills of wool in the loom.
4. A Hip Spindle is not a dance, however my husband has a few un-named moves that this could apply to. Here is a hip spindle.
There were several other techniques and truths learned, but I’ll spare you just now. I will for surely blog about my fleece’s bath, dye, carding and spinning as the action unfolds.
That was Baaa-aaa-aaad in the cool sense of the word. We are studying sheep with the boys right now and ventured to a sheep farm 45 minutes from our home. There were about 100 sheep on the farm and they are hair sheep, not wool sheep. They shed and don’t need to be sheered. A few of them were cross-bred with wool sheep, so they look fluffy. But the wool falls out like the hair. They looked like goats to me, but I’m a citified girl for sure. These sheep are raised for their meat and the ones at this farm are for training sheep dogs.
When we arrived there were several large fields with sheep dogs being trained and little groups of sheep running in circles. Reminded me of the boys’ first years of hockey. We got to hold sheep and feel the difference between hair and wool. We learned all about the four stomachs and how the sheep are called different names after surgery. (eeeweee) The grand finale of the day was when the 12 kids were put in the huge field to do the job of a sheep dog and herd the sheep into a small pen in the center.
It was highly entertaining. It was obvious which kids have played defence in some sport. The kids lined up and got the sheep moving in the right directions, but at the last moment the sheep passed the pen and went back to a safe corner of the field. Back to the drawing board. Much discussion was had and lines were formed again. They did get the sheep in on the second attempt… after only 10 minutes. The lady at the farm told us that a group of adults from American Express were doing the same thing for a team building experience. It took them 45 minutes to get the sheep in the pen. Figures. Adults all have their own hair-brained ideas of how everything should go. They probably needed to shed a bit of the wool over their eyes. Puns fully intended.
There were also five month old sheep dogs pups that needed to be socialized. It was providential that we had 12 homeschool kids that also needed to be socialized. :o)
We were invited back in the spring when the lambs are born! Yippy Skippy.
My Sister's Jar 
