Sunday, May 4, 2014

The Universe Needs A Different Hobby

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently took leave of reality and purchased four fleeces in the hopes of turning them into a felted rug for my upstairs hallway.  Both of you who read that post are aware of the fact that I'm up to my ears in fleece in various stages of cleanliness.

I don't know know if I mentioned this before, but I tend to be lazy.  My whole approach to housecleaning is based on entropy, that the laundry doesn't have to be done right this second because, chances are, it's not going to suddenly sprout legs and make a break for it, leaving me with something entirely inappropriate to wear to yoga.  Past experience with this phenomenon has given enough validation to my theory that I'm willing to risk leaving the laundry in a pile next to the washing machine  or the dirty dishes in the sink on a regular basis.  They have always, ALWAYS, without fail, been there when I was ready to deal with them, and I'm pretty sure there's a different force in effect to account for all the missing socks.  I'm not procrastinating. I'm prioritizing; there's other stuff that has to get done first.

So a smallish mountain of fleece, limited time, and internet access led me  to find articles about the Fermented Suint Method of cleaning fleeces.  It's too easy to be believed.  Basically, you get a big tub of rain water, a really greasy fleece, and you put the fleece into the tub of water for a while.  You keep the icky water that the greasy fleece soaked in, because, believe it or not, that's the first thing you're going to soak the next fleece in to get most of the ick out of it.  I couldn't believe it, I thought the whole thing to be a cruel joke, because really, why would you put the thing you want to clean into really dirty, stinky water?  And then I saw that Judith MacKenzie wrote about it.  If it's good enough for Judith Mackenzie, Wool Goddess of the highest order in this house, then I should give it a shot.

Irony #1 of all this is that the fleeces I have are Finns.  They are not greasy.  Not at all, really.  So this meant that I had to go and buy yet another fleece that's greasier than Finn so I can clean the ones I have.  So I did that, and now I have five fleeces to deal with.  Five is more than four, so by trying to make my work easier, I gave myself more work. I'm really hoping it will all even out in the end somehow.

Irony #2 is that the rain started on my way to the festival (after it was too late for me to put a tub under my downspout), the whole time I was there, & stopped when I was about twenty minutes away from home on the way back.  Everything I read said to use rain water, and I didn't have any.  So I used my well water & crossed my fingers.

Irony #3 reared it's ugly head by raining for the first two days my tub of well water and dirty fleece sat on the patio.  I didn't bother to put another tub under the downspout because I already started this nonsense with well water.  So now I'm at the point of no return, unless I buy yet another fleece (that would be #6) and wait for it to rain hard enough to fill a big tub with rainwater.

Number 4 showed up about an hour ago, when I decided to outside to check on the tub & see what was going on with fleece #5 and my well water.  I didn't go out and check because it started to rain.  At this point, I'm pretty sure that the fleece washing deities are trying to tell me that the well water isn't going to work, and there still isn't a tub under the downspout to collect rainwater.

I'm also pretty sure that the Universe is just bored and decided to mess with me for sport.


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