How to wash wool!

​Washing wool is a lot easier than it seems. The hardest part is finding a place for it to dry as it can take a couple of days, even in the sun. Wool can hold up to 30% of its weight in moisture without feeling damp, so it is essential to make sure it's extra dry before stashing it away.

As much as I love geeking out about this sort of thing, I'm going to keep this tutorial simple. You don't need to know the exact temperature lanolin and sunit melt at nor the .... any of those things.  For most of human history, people didn't know all this stuff.  But they managed to wash wool anyway, and so can you.

The following is suitable for most fleeces and even alpaca, llama, goat, and bunny fibre.  It's good to test if your fibre felts easily.  You can find this out by agitating a small handful underwater to see if it sticks together.  If it does, be gentler with your fibre than I was with mine or use a method that will reduce the amount of movement within the fibre.

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To wash wool, all you need is...

• water
• hot water
• wool
• some sort of soap or detergent that is easy to rinse (I use Orvus paste)
• a net bag (optional, but very helpful)

Here's what you do to wash wool.

1. Put the wool in a net bag so that the bag is less than half full.
2. Fill a sink (hopefully not one used for food production) or tub mostly full of very hot water. It should be too hot to put your hand in for more than half a second. 
3. Add your detergent to the wash water - less is more. You're going to have to rinse away all the detergent later, so it's probably better to add less now and do a second wash, then to add too much to the first wash.
4. Gently press the wool into the water and let it soak while you have a cuppa tea (usually about 20 min).
5. Remove the wool from the water and drain.  
6. Start rinsing. Fill the sink with warm to hot water (so that it would be uncomfortable to keep your hand in the water for more than 10 seconds). Gently press the wool into the water so that the water can flow through the fibres without agitating them. After a while, remove the wool from the water.
7. Repeat the rinse as many times as necessary to get the water mostly clean.
8. Remove the wool from the net bag and put somewhere to dry. You can Wuzz (see below) or press the wool in a towel to get the moisture off. If it's a sunny day, I usually set up a rack over top of some vegetables that want watering and let it drip dry there.

Oh look, I made a video for you visual learners out there.

Why Orvus paste?
I first learned about Orvus paste at the fall fair. People were using it to wash lambs before they go before the judges. They said it was very gentle and since I was having skin problems from using dish detergent on my wool, I decided to try it. 

It worked a treat for cleaning wool, and I needed hardly any to clean an entire fleece! Not only does it not bother my skin, but it is also biodegradable, so it works wonders on my garden.  


What's this bit about easy rinsing?
Soap and detergent are really great at breaking up grease and getting dirt away from the fibre, but cleaning agents leave a residue on the fibre. This is made worse with things like dish detergent that have additives to make it smell nice and be kind on your skin.  

It can often take more effort and water to rinse off the soap and detergent residue than to get rid of the lanolin and grime. Use as little as possible and avoid any that leave a strong scent on the wool after it's washed. The residue can make the wool tacky over time and worse, if you have sensitive skin like mine, it can bother the spinner or the wearer of the finished sweater.  


That's enough to get you started.  But what if you have A LOT of wool to wash?  ​

Washing a lot of wool

​Admittedly, I seldom wash wool in the garden anymore, except in drought when I can use the waste water on the plants.  The sink is just too small, and the kettle takes too long to boil.  But when I do, I usually re-use the rinse water.  After the first rinse, I add a bit of detergent and more hot water, to use it as the first wash for the next batch of wool.  

Inside the basement, I have a dedicated top-loading washing machine just for washing wool.  I make sure the hot water tank is turned up to the max, and use just tap water to fill the washing machine.  While it's filling up, I place the wool in net bags and put the Orvus paste in the water.  Once the machine is full, I turn it off so it won't agitate (felt) the wool, and gently press the fibre into the soapy water.

I leave it to soak, then lift the wool out of the washing machine, drain it, fill it, rinse, repeat until the water is clear.  At the very end, I wuzz  (sometimes spelt wuz) the wool.  Wuzzing is a spinning motion which the spin cycle of the washing machine is happy to do for me.  To wuzz, we place the wool in a net bag and swing it overhead like a lasso until the water stops dripping off the wool.  It's a lot of fun, but I didn't want to get the camera wet, so I omitted it from the film.  Thankfully, the washing machine spin cycle does this for me with less arm ache.