First you shave a sheep. Shear a sheep. Whatever. In our case, we skipped this step and went straight to...



...dividing it up very carefully using the time-honored tradition of "I split you choose".

Then you say, "holy cow, I have a bunch of fleece". Panic. Notice what may very well be poop in the locks. Take a deep breathe. Smell the earthy goodness of the fleece. Remember the farm.

Google it. Duh.

So this is how you prepare fleece, a beginners guide (as in, I am a beginner writing a guide, heh). Please keep in mind during this that we did this on a wing and a prayer and did most of it wrong but it turned out alright even so:

First you pull out a lock. Grace, who owned the sheep that was shorn, suggested keeping track of the locks by their tips. If, during the process, things start to get a little mixed up you can pick up the fleece by the lock to find it again.



Next, fill a bowl with hot soapy water. This is the first bowl I used. In subsequent washings I learned to use a much bigger bowl because it doesn't really pay to soak one lock at a time. Unless you have a couple of spare months lying around that you don't have any use for.



Next place several locks gently on top of the water, being very careful not to agitate them at all. This is very important unless you want to skip straight to the felting.



We were told that to avoid the wool getting shocked by temperature changes that we should allow the wool to stay in the water while it cools down. Using this method we achieved a really variegated color when we later dyed the wool because so much lanolin stayed in, having cooled down with the water and reattached to the fiber (imagine grease that dissolves in hot water and solidifies in cold).



I liked this look but if you would rather have a solid dye job then you should soak the wool for 15-20 minutes and then pull it out. You can then soak it again for 15-20 minutes in hot water to rinse.

Do all of this very carefully to avoid the whole agitation/felting thing.

Since we ended up with cool water we were able to very carefully work the tips of the lock with our fingernails to get some of the, uh, organic material out.



Then we rinsed the fleece in cool water (since the wash water had been cool) and ta-da:



don't let this fluffy white wool fool you, it is still loaded with lanolin, which resists dyeing, except for the tips which were 'worked'.



squeeze the excess water out and:



wait.

The End.

Actually not quite. After following all of these steps several times, and washing an obscenely small amount of wool, we found out you can do all of this in a washing machine. Very good instructions for both hand and machine washing can be found here.

If you want information on kool-aid dyeing this article was invaluable. She even gives a color chart for the different flavors! I caution you though, the new 'mad scientist' flavor that starts out one color and ends up another dyes the wool in interesting (but unpredictable) streaks of both colors.

The End.