Catching up on the FSM vat

Last week, before the thunderstorm hit, I pulled out the second fleece from the FSM vat and tossed in a third.  I saved a small portion of the third to be soaked in some plain rainwater and washed for comparison with the FSM-washed fleece.

The fleece, again, looks quite different from the others. Perhaps more alike to the first fleece with a lot of crimp.

Upon immersion in the rainwater tub, the dirt was evident.  A little swishing and the water turned a golden colour.

Time to immerse the rest of the fleece. You can see the white-ish highlights against the orange mesh bag and the dark, smelly vat liquid. Oh, yeah, the vat is good and smelly now.

Then I let the rain rinse the second fleece. This is my black fleece. While intense, the rain was short-lived.

I used rain water from the overflow barrel and one of my large buckets to rinse sections of the fleece that I could then lay out to dry.  A half way through that work the rinse water was in need of refreshing. I fed some of it back into the FSM vat, fed some to the garden, and then diluted with more rain water.  By the last bits, I had a second rinse going too.

Just as the fleeces were dry (last Friday), I was helping out at the school all morning when the rain hit again, unexpectedly. I had to start drying again. 
The story of the black fleece continues... (I've already spun a sample because I delayed on finishing this post due to too much family fun.)