I don't know if I mentioned that I was given two rare Navajo-Churro in-grease fleeces last fall. They sat, first on the stairs, then in my bedroom, bulky trashbag-shrouded objects, in the way for months. Finally I nerved myself to wash them.

The fleeces were something of a test. Most everyone I knew who kept sheep for stockdog practice had hair sheep. Wool was just an inconvenience. But I didn't want "dogtoy" sheep. My dream is of a real, if tiny, homestead, with livestock that I really eat, milk, and shear. As much as I like working livestock with dogs, there is something weird to me about the entertainment side of it. I feel the same way about my neighbor who keeps roping calves, and has his friends over on a regular basis for team roping practice. Is this really the covenant with domestic animals we desire?

Much like hair sheep who exist for the pleasure of moving them around a field, wool has become a set of separated hobbies.Even hand spinners rarely wash fleeces themselves. Instead, they buy roving (ready-to-spin wool). Even if they purchase raw wool, they send it to a specialist for preparation. That is, they have an interest in participating in exactly one part of the process, and since it is entirely an avocation, that is just what they do.

But I was made of sterner stuff. I read ten conflicting internet accounts of how to wash fleeces. Hot, warm, cold water, special soap, no soap, detergent. Filled with confidence, I boiled vast quantities of water on the stove and hauled it upstairs to the bathtub, which was filled with the hottest water my water heater could manage, plus cups of dish detergent. In went my first fleece, a beautiful silvery gray one, enclosed in the mesh bag I had made for it out of garden netting. The water instantly turned a filthy opaque black. Then the fun began. Eight solid hours of work later, I had finished washing my two fleeces, and was exhausted.

The idea is to clean the lanolin and dirt out without felting the wool, which ruins it. Wet wool felts when it is subject to agitation, alkalinity, or abrupt changes in temperature. Or, just when it feels irritable. I was as careful as I knew how to be, and bathed my wool gently in successive rinses of ever cooler water, until finally it could be spread out to dry outside on screens.

Of course, I had waited until we had a week of intermittent freezing rain and dull cold days. I had to escort my wool indoors and back out for days, hoping it would someday dry. It did, eventually. But it had felted anyway.

Well, some of it did. Most of it was salvageable, with some hours of patient teasing. Luckily I adore working with wool. Everything about it charms me. Even washing it. I'll do better next time.

While my wool was drying, my parents came over for Christmas Day lunch, and viewed my clean lumpy fleeces. My seventy-eight year old mother commented, "Oh, my grandmother used to do this. The whole thing, shearing, washing, carding, spinning . . . all the way to gloves and sweaters."

Too bad she didn't leave some notes.