Vacuum Packed Wool

[Helen Fleischer]

This would be a good time to use the trick of securing a stocking over
the end of the vacuum hose. Great for picking up beads, also good to
keep the vacuum from eating any wool.

| On Fri, 16 Mar 2001 09:16:46 -0500, Pavel <Pave...@home.com> wrote:

>Realizing that most of the volume in the bags was taken up
>by air, not wool, we tried sucking the air out of the bags
>by putting the vacuum cleaner hose into the top of the bag
>and holding the neck of the bag tightly around the tube.

helen...@covad.net <--Note newest address!
Helen "Halla" Fleischer,
Fantasy & Fiber Artist in Fairland, MD USA

[Pavel]

If you're a hand spinner or felter, you might be interested
in a technique we developed to ship our wool easier. We had
25 pounds of washed wool from our sheep to ship to the mill
for processing. This amount of wool just about filled three
large plastic bags and wouldn't fit into even our largest
box. It looked like we'd have to ship several boxes at
considerable expense.

Realizing that most of the volume in the bags was taken up
by air, not wool, we tried sucking the air out of the bags
by putting the vacuum cleaner hose into the top of the bag

and holding the neck of the bag tightly around the tube. It
worked amazingly well! In less that half a minute, the bag
had shrunk to about a third of its original size, allowing
us to put all three bags into one box. I posted more details
on this to our website. Go to
http://members.home.net/rbfarm/ then click on the link in
the first paragraph.

If you buy bulk wool, you might want to suggest this method
to your supplier to cut your shipping costs.

pli