Update

This is the washed fleece drying on my airer. I found that it only dries properly if there's air circulating underneath it. If it's on a towel on the floor however much you turn it any water just drains back through. It will dry eventually but this is quicker.

I pegged a piece of muslin (no home should be without a piece of muslin) across the top of the airer and spread the fleece over the top of it.

I just love the way the white looks like a cumulus cloud.

It is a cumulus that looks like that isn't it?

I've begun carding it now. The brown seems a tiny bit matted, don't know if it came like that or if I did it when I washed it. Most likely the latter, but it's carding out okay. Need me drum carder now, it's slow progress doing it by hand and I want to get on with spinning (not a Christmas present hint me duck, I know what they cost!)

Here are the rollags I prepared last night (before I gave up and began spinning some tops I bought from Wingham the other weekend.)

For the benefit of Artis Anne who asked I bought the fleece from Jazzyhills on ebay. Her feedback has been mostly positive, a few complaints about fleece not being clean. It's a bit of a tricky one, if you are buying raw fleece then it will be mucky to an extent. It will require cleaning. Being a novice I don't know what is reasonable. This needed a bit more attention than the fleece Ro gave me, but as I said before most sheep live outside and they will collect debris in their fleece. I've been very amused by some of the articles in Spin Off which talk about keeping sheep in coats to keep the fleece clean. Somehow I don't see that catching on in this country.

Wormhead, I found that the Ecover was sufficient to get the lanolin out with a soak in hand warm water and repeated rinsing in same. In fact there seemed to be very little grease in this fleece to start off with, though it did require cleaning. I did consider getting some of that stuff that you recommended but I have access to Ecover at work (staff discount) so thought I'd try that to start with and so far I've been happy with it.