Cheating on my English Combs... Already?

Thanks to the noticing of an ad by one very nice Spinwyn on Rav, I connected with a set of used Indigo Hound 5-pitch English combs. Yet to arrive and the seller lives in Canada so it'll take a while. They happen to be the "Fine" and not the "Standard" but due to a 5-month illness, Indigo Hound is so back ordered at this point that it could be a couple of months before my LYS can get an order filled. Meanwhile, with 40 pounds of Romney fleece, I'm going to need something more than my PackFlats.

The choices of more "serious" combs have been pretty much either multi-pitch English combs (straight tines) or 2-pitch Viking combs (curved tines), both made by Indigo Hound. The Vikings started intriguing me also, but again, Indigo Hound is pretty much the only game in town for either. Well, other than Forsyth combs --$400 but oh so lustworthy!-- which have BOTH curved tines AND multi rows (4-pitch). I'd read very good things about Volkyrie in the 2-pitch curved Viking combs, but always with the parenthetical note, "no longer in production."

Well, along then, comes a new Rav poster -- none other than the maker of Valkyrie combs! He's been thinking of coming out of hybernation and going back into production. I was curious to see his Viking combs but I'd been also very intrigued with getting a hackle for blending. That's another thing that's just not out there. And in one of his posts, he mentioned still having an 18-inch hackle from 5 years ago that he'll sell.

So I connected with him yesterday because he just happens to live nearby. And I bought his 18-inch hackle. Can we say "serious, fearsome piece of equipment"? Yes, let's say that. Five-inch-tall, 2-pitch tines, but 18 inches of them. I see great possibilities for this thing in blending colors from dyed locks by lining them up in the final pass, one color next to the other, and dizzing off one or more continuous color changing slivers. With 40 pounds of Romney fleece (which will eventually be dyed for just that purpose), a hackle could be a terrific tool for that.

So here's what that tool looks like. The extra space on the ends are for C-clamps or bolting it down permanently to a work station.



Meanwhile, again still waiting for my English combs which might very well do everything I need, I just had to try his bent-tine Viking combs. And ohhhh, did they EVER feel great in my hand. Terrific grip size. Plus if those IH English combs prove to be too heavy to wield for my arthritic shoulder, the Vikings are what I'd be buying, most likely. So jumping the gun since he's not producing them yet but had a set or two left over, I bought a set.





Here's a shot of them from the side. Such a nice bend! Not overdone, just enough to avoid tine catches.


So not for casual storage, that's for sure. Time will tell if I'm going to be able to use either the Vikings or the English because of a bumb shoulder, but I've decided there's pretty much no way to know which kind I'll find works for me, if either, without just working with them more than an on-the-spot test combing.

So that's my tool stash addition, from a very expensive yesterday.

First Quickie Color Blending Test on Drum Carder

Two unlikely colors combined...

Teensy Staple HELL

I'm afraid to go through the entire HUGE bag of dark brown in this fleece for fear it's all going to be like this, but here's what I have an awful lot of in the last lot that I scoured of that otherwise gorgeous New Zealand natural colored fleece. Obviously some of it just has to be dumped, I can't help but think this is a ton of 2nd cut (the balls). However, as for the tiny staples that are intact staples, that just doesn't seem like 2nd cut. It just seems like teensy, teensy, teensy staples. Maybe head fleece?? Maybe a LIMITED amount of head fleece???



And this, below, is what I actually have been lashing on. The only upside is that I'm finding that if I look carefully, some of these tend to come in groupings so I can lash on a mass of them. Doing them individually though... that's when I start thinking of Barbie sized wool combs. I separated these out.

This is DEFINITELY training in careful lashing on!



Hmmm, just noticed. The perspective in the photo makes them look bigger than they are. The pen is farther back than it should be for reference, and I was close-up enough so the foreground looks magnified. So some of these are an inch long. Actually, some are under an inch long. In the first photo, some of those little blobs are just that, blogs. But some of them are curled up TEENSY miniature but otherwise perfect staples, butt end to tip end, perfectly intact.

Lanolin Soup

Well, I thought since I've brought home another 16 lbs. raw fleece (see post below), I'd better finish scouring the New Zealand I bought earlier this week. Between two stovetop canning pots of water at about 150 degrees and my washing machine (tap water gets to 125 degrees), I just scoured about 2 pounds. It's gotta be more than that, but that's what my numbers say.

Meet Lanolin Soup...





The question was, where to dry it??? Well, after considering on a blanket spread out on the lawn (bah humbug, we have groundhogs and squirrels, plus a barn cat, this could look very appealing for nesting material to say nothing of wind), and no places in the house that would work very easily... what the hey.

This gives a whole new meaning to the term "Auto Dryer." Hey, why not? It's parked in the sun, it gets hot in there, and I don't keep the back seats in it! I'll just have to remember to keep the front window closed when I drive anywhere. (Photos lie, there's way more in here than it looks like, but I love the potential I'm seeing for that little minivan as a drying place in the summertime!

Insane Amounts of Fleece and Other Finds

As part of an estate sale, a guy had about 40 fleeces he's been selling. His late mother has sheep, and was very much into the fiber arts. He's been selling various fiber-related equipment as well. He sold a loom, still had another, and as of the day I was GOING to go he had an antique spinning wheel which he sold that night, so by the next day when I went, that was gone along with a 2nd pair of hand carders, which I'm sorry about. I'm probably best off that he didn't still have the antique wheel. If it had appealed to me on looks alone, I'd have bought it.

I was interested in the fleeces because the per-pound price was really good and my understanding was that his mom's fleeces were really well-regarded by people in her spinning guild. They are Romney, Border Leicester and Cotswold. Unfortunately I don't know much about any of those, but have done some research and decided to pass on the Cotswold, but was split on which to buy of the Romney and BL.

I ended up buying one of each, a 7.3-lb. BL ewe fleece and an 8.5-lb. Romney ewe. All the 2008 fleeces sold out quickly because of ridiculously low price, and these were shorn about a month ago, so are fresh, fresh, fresh! My only experience with raw fleece was the New Zealand (post below) which I knew was at least a year old, maybe more. Man, you stick your hand into one of these fleeces and it comes out glistening! Fresh, pure lanolin.

The Romney Ewe




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The Border Leicester Ewe





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I also bought some misc. things he still had. A set of Clemes & Clemes hand carders which Jenny really wanted ($40) and while looking at those, noticed an Ashford flicker brush ($5) that she hadn't mentioned wanting, but figured she'd want also. Great deals, but man, were they ever gunky! Little balls of neps but looked totally fixable. I went at them with this weird little tool I'd bought sometime back. (Picture a fan-style leaf rake, except this is tiny and the fan tines are very fine metal.) Voila! I spent a good 45 minutes and enjoyed doing it. Every last spec is gone, and Damn Sam, both the hand carders and the flicker brush are in amazingly perfect condition. Not a tooth missing or bent. So great deals.

I DO wish I'd taken a picture before I cleaned these, but here they are. Mecca!!


The flicker brush.


ALMOST last (but not least!) there was this HUGE basket. His mom had LOTS of baskets! Some a little unusual, many not. But this one just caught my eye, bigtime. Dusty, dirty, cobwebs even. Loom parts were in it along with other miscellany and it looked very interesting, but its impact just didn't hit me until I got it home and cleaned it up. It did have a tag on it. Mom had a tendency to leave tags on things. This tag looked very, very old. A little generic paper tag like what people would use in a marketplace on the off streets of St. John. Scrawled on it was "hand woven in Africa." And on the other side, a price that nowhere in my memory could it have possibly sold for in the U.S... $29. Well, maybe in the 40s when physicians' expensive houses sold for $40K (which were always called "homes" when other houses were called "houses"). If she traveled at all, I suspect she brought it home from somewhere where street vendors lurked. She was 76 when she died.




I don't know what the two loops are at the top on either side of the leather wrapping on the handle, maybe just decorative or an artistic finish of ends, but the basket actually looks like it was built for actual carrying things, albeit beautifully made. Not just for tabletop decorating. One only wraps a handle in leather on a working basket, I'd think. Nor would you typically use leather wraps around where the handle joins with the basket body. And it was also a leather type I've never seen before. It has a totally unusual feel and look. The basket flops to 20" long, 12" wide when on a surface. More circular when being carried.

I wish I knew when and where she bought it, just to know the story behind that. Let's just say her basket found a home where it'll be loved. And it will live on the cedar chest and hold WIPs.


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I also bought two hand spindles, kind of "just because." Price was right. He said someone told him the first one is a Navajo spindle. I thought you twirled those in a bowl or something. Well, it looks like the bottom tip has been twirled. There's a teensy but very, very strong hook on the top which I think wouldn't be there on a Navajo spindle, but may have been added because I'm thinking one could twirl it on its top too. I can't find a youtube video on Navajo spindles. Otherwise it just looks like one humungous drop spindle. It's 16 inches long! Center-weighted, there's no carve-out on the underside of the whorl. And it weighs 3.4 oz. This could make a great plying spindle for a LOT of yarn if wrapped football style.

The other, I know is a Turkish spindle but this one has two separate pieces going in each direction, which must have a purpose. No clue what though. The only other Turkish spindle I've seen only had one in each direction, curved downward. (Since writing this post, I found a youtube video that has what looks like the exact same spindle! Same big size, same shaped head, same flat cross bars. But hers only had one crossbar in each direction, so the two remains a mystery.




So that was my estate sale day. I started scouring the rest of the New Zealand (a measley little 4-1/4 pounds by comparison to these two fleeces) and could see right away I'm gonna be scouring fleeces for a LONG time. The New Zealand is my prize though. Luvit, luvit, LUVIT!!

4.5 Pounds of er... uh.... "New Zealand"

ERRATA (FIRST PARAGRAPH) -- According to the book "In Sheep's Clothing" and further research on 'the internets' there IS a sheep breed called New Zealand Halfbred. I saw pictures, and many are bi-colored like my Paint horse is. I also now understand that different colored fleece off the same sheep CAN have different staple lengths and characteristics. I'm now thinking all this is from the same sheep. (Leaving 1st paragraph as is for my own reasons.)

The Dark Fleece - Supposed to be the same type of sheep, but the dark locks have a significantly shorter staple length. I don't know if different colored sheep, same breed, would vary in staple length based solely on different colors, but that's possible. Anyone happen to know that?

Based on my test amount I processed, this fleece didn't lose a lot of color when scoured. I'm not going to process the rest of it more aggressively, the last thing I want is any of it whitened anymore than necessary.

The "gestalt"



The Dark Fleece









The light fleece









Beautiful color variations in between the dark and light.



My looser, more lofty-spun yarn and test swatch

First Combing Try - Lincoln Fleece

My scoured locks dried overnight, so I grabbed a big handful and lined up all the tips at one end, which is facing the camera.


After lashing them onto my stationary comb (clamped to a countertop), this is what it looked like after only two passes through the combs. One big poof!



The above being elongated into a sliver by pulling through a diz (little wooden block with a hole in it). The diz is halfway down the sliver, just to show the fiber before and after being pulled into a sliver.


Neat little slivers, wrapped into birds' nests. Very delicate. I could see immediately that I'd be getting some great fiber joining practice when spinning my own combed fiber.


My cute little mini-skein, spun and plyed. I discovered that Lincoln has a ridiculously long staple length (maybe 9 inches?) which took some serious getting used to. It's a coarse fiber in terms of staple thickness, yet amazingly silky. Scratchy next to skin, but silky. Odd seeming combination! I could see a rug made out of this, not a cowl.


So that's my first combing experience. The post below this one shows the greasy fleece the above came from. Pretty amazing transition, but way less complicated than I'd feared, all told. Thanks to Ravelry members and youtube videos, I had a pretty good idea built up on how to go at scouring and combing fleece in the grease.