Yetis, it turns out, are Doctor Who monsters from about the 1970s. They are big, hairy, shambling beasts. To be more technical about it, they are actors shambling about in big, hairy costumes. Presumably back in the 20th century they used synthetic fabrics, so I dread to think how uncomfortable it was for those poor guys in the costumes.
My MWAS, as a new and keen cosplayer (translation: someone who dresses up as a Doctor Who character for fun) wants to be a Yeti. Since I have convinced him that wool-based fabrics are the best fabrics on the planet, or at least the best ones we can afford, he wants to make the costume out of fleece. He has watched me peg-looming a rug out of washed, but otherwise unprocessed, Romney, Herdwick abd Leicester Long wool and thought: "My word, that looks a lot like Yeti fur!"
He asked me if I had any fleece I could spare, and naively I pointed out the four buckets. He used them all, even the rather nice bits of Romney I'd been saving for.....y'know, something. Then he asked me for more.
"How much more?" I asked nervously.
"About five times as much!" was the answer. "And if possible, a bit felty and sort of brown. Like a Yeti."
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| A dining table full of Yeti pelt. |
This did not sound like a good idea. Nevertheless, I believe in standing by my MWAS no matter how crazy he is, so I contacted the lovely people who supply my Romney and asked if they had any felty, brown fleece going really cheap.
They explained to me the concept of belly wool, and that by virtue of growing fairly close to the ground on an outdoors-living animal, it's pretty gross. They offered me 15 kilos for postage only, and I jumped at it.
The postage was paid, and the fleece arrived. Holy ovine excrement, it smelled! It sat in our sitting room for four days before I insisted it went up the loft, in hessian sacks. We kept a third of it out, picked it over for twigs, short bits, bits that were more mud than fleece, and anything generally unpleasant. Then we threw it into a bucket of water and left it to soak in the garden.
I tried washing it all for my MWAS, but after a week my sinuses rebelled and I decided to teach him how to wash it for himself. I broke it down into the following easy-to-remember steps:
Put a large plastic bucket in the sink.
Fill with water, as hot as you can get.
Squeeze in washing-up liquid, while chanting "Great Cthulhu's tentacles!" (this is about a 1-second squeeze, which experiment has shown to be the ideal amount for this quantity of fleece)
Add a laundry bag, a third to a half filled with a large double handful of your soaked fleece. It's probably about half a pound, dry weight. Of course, at this stage it isn't dry any more. It is cold, wet, muddy and smelly. Did I mention the need for an apron? You'll wish now that you had worn an apron.
Note the time. Go and do something in another room. You will want to escape the smell.
15 minutes later, come back. Pull out the bag of fleece (erg!). Pour away the water (erg erg!) Refill the bucket with hot water.
Add washing-up liquid, this time chanting "Cthulhu lives!" This will give you a smaller quantity of detergent for the second wash. Go away for another 15 minutes.
Come back. Now you are on the rinses. Hot water only, no detergent. 15 minutes each or thereabouts.
Repeat rinses until the water is....not clean, because life's too short and this belly fleece is FUNKY. Just until the water is clean enough that you would wash your muddy feet in it, if you had to. Imagine a camping holiday in Wales, with a shortage of hot water. THAT clean.
Spin the fleece in the spinner. If you haven't got a spinner, this bit is tricky. Luckily, we have a spin dryer and it isn't.
Spread the fleece out to dry on a wire rack, or in our case, the guinea pigs cage. The guinea pigs are used to it by now.
My MWAS has, so far, managed to wash...er, no fleece, that's NONE, all by himself. Eventually he will run out of clean fleece, and I will watch with interest to see what he does then.
