About 4 weeks I set Lambert's fleece to self clean by the Fermenting Suint method
details of the method can be found here Fermenting Suint
I will start back at the beginning
Lambert was sheared you can see how dirty he is
This was back in spring lovely and clean underneath
Four weeks ago his fleece was put into a black bin filled with rainwater lid on and left
Today was the day, I set up and old fire guard (never throw anything away) over a big container
Took the lid off the bin phew did it stink
pulled out the fleece and left it to drain
the water that drained off was poured back into the bin
and another fleece I was given a few weeks ago was put in to start fermenting
this fleece should work a lot quicker you can re-use the water lots of times
I rinsed off the fleece with rainwater several times until there was no more smell, the fleece you can see is a lot cleaner and its now drying off in the sunshine, once dry I can card it and then it will be ready for spinning.
It was a bit smelly to do but nothing worse than a muck heap :-)
Looks fab Dawn! I hope you'll post some photos when you get to the spinning stage :)
ReplyDeleteWill do :-)
DeleteDo you / should you ferment alpaca fibre? Or would the lack of lanolin in the fibre inhibit the fermenting?
ReplyDeleteno it dosent work with Alpaca because of the lack of lanolin, I have jus been carding and spinning the alpaca then washing after, I give the fleece a good sake i the wind t get some of the dust out, Alpaca isnt as dirty as sheep :-)
DeleteIt's made quite a difference, looks much cleaner. :-)
ReplyDeletenow have it in the greenhouse drying :-)
DeleteMy goodness, quite a task! xx
ReplyDeletenot really a lot of the time its just sitting around but it is a smelly job :-)
Delete