COMBS

Last year I was given many many fleeces from a herder friend who raises a small breeding flock for lamb meat. I still have bags that need to be washed and we are coming closer and closer to this year's shearing season...but now I have a new set of tools to help me get through it all and hopefully not end up with a house full of raw wool.

These are my lovely combs from Paradise Fibers. This picture was actually taken for a friend after she shared that she had had some combs, but as each one was over 2 pounds she lacked the motivation to use them and they were sold. In case you can't see, these are 11.25 ounces together.

They certainly make the wool combing go much quicker. Before I was using sort of similarly shaped dog brushes, and the results were useable, but not ideal. The real combs work much faster, allow me to get out much more veg, and produce those nice little "birds nests" I had heard about when I first started processing wool.

Overall, everything is working better, and as long as nobody gets too close, I can happily comb wool through a whole TV show (as long as I've seen it before, otherwise my attention kind of wanders... :)).

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As far as the blanket goes, I am going to try to get a new picture up this weekend, but little progress has been made this week. Last week was good and I got through the first two borders (37 rows) and started about 6 or so rows of the pattern. However, once I had done those 37 rows and started the first row of the pattern, I learned that I had not actually cast on the required 164 stitches...I only had 150. I was not about to rip out all those rows and start over, and since there were effectively two borders, I just made the inner border thinner...a lot thinner, but it's still there. Hopefully it works out, and my sister-in-law-to-be likes it. Anyway...here's hoping for a new picture this weekend!