My daughter was asking me about how things were when I was young. We had to make do with what we had back then. My father had a farm in Gorenzen with a few cows, pigs, a couple of work horses and 34 sheep. The sheep were kept in sheds all winter and by the time spring came, their fleeces were filthy. Ammonia was too expensive to use as a cleaning agent, so the whole of the family was encouraged to go on the potty. All the urine was collected and boiled in a big vat and that's where the fleeces were cleaned. Then they were rinsed in water and set out in the sun to dry. Then the wool was carded and spun.
In the 80s in Sydney when I started wool dying, I used ammonia as a fixative for the colours. Here's a photo of a vat of fleece from then. The lovely colour though came from using leaves from the silver-dollar gum, and I didn't need to use ammonia since eucalypts have tannin which fixes the colours naturally.
Here's a picture of what some of the dyed wool looked like once spun and knitted.
