Making sheep soup


I've been in white coat and goggles this evening. OK, not really, but I have been trying my best to test Unicorn Power Scour as fairly as I can against my old standby, washing-up liquid (Ecover in my case). Power Scour claims to wash out dirt and grease more effectively, without yellowing and leaves the fibre with a clean, fresh aroma. OK....



I weighed two lots of 200g of nice greasy raw fleece as accurately as I could (one of Power Scour's claims is about yield on the grounds of reduced tangles). Each batch is to be washed in exactly the same way, the way that I normally do it:

  1. Gently lower the fleece into the hot soapy water. I've followed Power Scour's instructions to the letter, that is 5% of the weight of the fleece. That's 10g of product, which sounded a lot, but is really just a couple of squirts. (I weighed this carefully too, and used exactly the same amount of dish-washing liquid.) Leave to soak for 20mins.
  2. Carefully drain. lower into the first rinse water, which is the same temperature as the soapy water was when it was drained off.
  3. Repeat the rinse until clear. In the case of the Power Scour this was three times.
  4. Put into a pillow-case and use the washing machine's spin cycle.
  5. Allow to dry naturally.
When both are dry I plan to compare them, run both batches through the drum carder, compare them again, then spin into yarn and compare again.

The only comment I can make so far is that the Power Scour water smelled gorgeous!

The first batch (Power Scour) is done, and the second (washing-up-liquid) is brewing in the soapy water:

2 comments:

Sophie said...

I'm keen to know how this all turned out.

peahen said...

Hi Sophie, thanks for your interest! I started to write a little update here, but it turned into a bigger update so I've made a new post about it: http://stitchywitches.blogspot.com/2009/08/power-scour-test-update.html