I recently acquired about nine sheep's worth of wool. Which by the way is approximately 3-4 entire washing machine full loads. I spent about one day cleaning and picking all the grass and such out of the first three sheep's worth. (The other six were sheared the next day, so I just finished running it through the washing machine.) I put them in on extra low tumble and high heat and it seemed to work pretty well with minimal felting. I then attempted to sort the wool by color cause some of our sheep are brownish-grey, and some are darker brown. They of course sheared them all into one big pile so I had basically no success on that front. I then used our homemade carders to try to card some of it. I bought pads since those are super specific but we built a wooden frame for them. After about 10 hours straight of working I had all the wool (from three sheep) processed and about four of the lumpiest rolags ever. Still proud of myself. After a bit longer here are my four best rolags, I am not sure if they are even spinnable but I will give it a shot when I get my drop spindle. For those of you looking to try this, don't try to make your own carders, I will now be buying some even though they are crazy expensive. I have multiple blisters on my hands and only marginal success to show for it. The one on the right was my first one so you can see the progress as it moves to the left.
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