My lovely old aunt was clearing her basement and gifted me a full ashford wool workshop complete with wool and original instruction manuals.
It had all been in storage since 1989, and the wool stank and awash in vintage beetle infestations.

I received all with joy (and an empty freezer).
Having absolutely no experience with carding or spinning and reasoned that worst case I would not have wasted good money on new wool in my learning process.
Som i packed the wool lightly in vacuum bags and froze for a couple of weeks. It was absolutely yellow and a bit vile. But luck upon luck, our tap water is hot enough to dissolve old lanolin and the wool ended up being regular wolly wool.
Next step I had decided to try coloring as part of the washing process, and went with ashford indigo. Let it cool overnight, put it through the machine spin cycle and it was dry that evening.

Next came carding. The only thing that was broken after storage was the drum carders plastic band, even the wheel drive band is still in perfect working order!
It turned out that I had about 1 kg of wool ready for spinning… And after a few bobbins of weirdness I must confess, I love spinning!
And then, what to do with my beautiful scratchy vintage 2-ply wool yarn. Well the dragon maiden came to life…

Top down, beginning with neck ribbing.
Then i-cord shoulders (my own invention)
Knitted a torso tube (with extra stitches for steeking), the dragon is in floating cable with the worst of the brown yarn, finished with Pico in 1 ply.
Steeked the sleeve hole and cast on directly, finishing in pivot.