Scouring with Soda Ash

So...I've been sloooowly scouring (washing) the wool we bought for J2B last year.

A few minutes ago, I put some wool I'd cold soaked out by the pool into a hot tap water bath (2 gallons) with 1/4 cup of soda ash (courtesy of our pool supplies.). I've set the timer for 20 minutes. I don't have any means of weighing the wool. I think it was less than half of a pound's worth...I'm going to say 1/4 pound. We'll see what happens. The wool is in a zippered mesh lingerie bag

We have the house on a water filtration system, so we have soft water running through the pipes and in the pool.

Cold soaking with no soap appears to work fairly well to get rid of the dirt. If I set the tub out in the sun, it gets warm, too. I put this batch of wool in two consecutive cold soak baths of about 5 gallons of water, each.

Ding!
Okay! I just now took the wool out of the soda water and ran a hot tap water bath and put it in to rinse for another 20 minutes. The water from the soda bath looked like very weak tea. Obviously, the cold soak did not get all the dirt out of the wool. Depending on how icky the water looks after this rinse, I may put it in for another 20 minutes on a warm soak and then spin out the water in the machine before hanging it to dry on the back deck.

I picked the wool up off the cement around the pool deck and moved it to the table because the kids are going swimming.

I put half of the remaining wool in the spider tub (it has a spider decal on the side) to cold soak and I changed the water a few minutes ago. Yuck!