So I got a couple big garbage bags of smelly, dingy, raw wool, free for the hauling, from some friends. It's a very "natural" off-white, but from the smell of it a lot of the "off" is sheep sweat, urine, and possibly mold or mildew. Smell is worse after a few days of hauling it around in the car.

...

I decided to try washing it, and see how it goes. If I'm going to teach people to spin and process fiber, I could use the practice.

I borrowed a rubber horse-trough which is just about the perfect size for one bag of wool. I threw it in there one night, covered it in water (added a little dish soap), and put the bag over top of it to keep debris out, with a few brick-bits to weigh it down.
...

Came back a day or two later, started siphoning dirty water into the garden.

I kept finding little dags (or dingleberries), clumps of wool, dirt, sheep-excrement, and what-have-you. I was thinking, "Aren't shearers supposed to take the dags off _before_ they shear the fleece, what shoddy work, they must have just given up on these dirty sheep that had been dragging their bellies in the mud, and sheared them to start over."
Then I heard myself, and found my next task. I opened up the other bag of wool. I spread the fleeces out on a canvas tarp, and pulled off all the obvious dags and anything that rattled on the tarp.

I swished and rinsed and wrung out enough wool to fill two improvised drying racks. Sprayed it again to rinse it one more time, it's becoming almost white! Left it drying (and the rest still soaking) for the night.

...

After a few days of showers, the laid-out fleeces are sort of evenly brown from the rain.
The first batch of clean wool is almost dry. Set that aside in a crate, start swishing and rinsing and pulling out a second batch.
The next fleece seems yellow -- kinda blonde.

I'm thinking, 'Do sheep even come in blonde? Or am I just being lazy, and once I wash out everything this sheep has rolled in, it will come white?'
I haul it up, and the whole fleece seems to have this yellowish cast to it.

I keep rinsing, and rinsing. Take a little section and scrub it, add soap again. It's still blonde. The inner wool is creamy white, but the outer wool is yellow.

I figure, 'Hey, I've found the golden fleece.'
Makes me wonder if Jason* was just trying to shirk his domestic duties.

I separate the white and the blonde wool onto the two drying racks, picking out the worst of the dags, moss chunks, and areas grey-brown with tangled-in seeds, bits of fiber, and sand.

Rinse, swish, repeat. I want a giant wooden paddle.

Leave it to dry and continue soaking, respectively.

...

*
I start daydreaming about Jason and Argonauts seeking the golden fleece,
... was it a quest for a more "natural" life, for the wilderness, for something that stayed colorful even when clean?
.... about the witch he found to help him escape the island king's wrath, who he married, and then discarded. Medea, her name was, and for revenge she poisoned his fashionable new bride and killed her own children [by him].

Dangers of leaving civilized life, then trying to return?
Dangers of bargaining with fey things, then trying to renege?
Dangers of reading Greek mythology as if it were universal?

...

I should have a couple of crates' worth of washed raw wool in time for Sunday. Now, to harvest enough ivy, willow, etc. that we can make baskets as well.