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... :)).

 --------

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!

Adventures with a Ball Winder

I need one soooo badly!

A friend of mine let me borrow his ball wonder the other week. Wow, it was so great! I caked all my handspun and a few commercial yarns as well. It was so quick and easy, though it was a bit loud.

I guess the next step is to try the method I saw on Pinterest where you wrap it with a stand mixer. I keep putting it off for some reason. Apparently it's very quick, but I can't seem to feel that it wouldn't really help the noise factor.

 

This one isn't mine, it's from geocachingknitter.blogspot.com, but you get the idea of how it is supposed to work. But it looks like that will wait for another day...

Swift!

Happy Independence Day for all those in America!

Yay, my swift is here! It actually came last Wednesday, but the whole basement thing kinda kept me off the computer.

Here it is all put together with it's own bag. I don't plan to carry the swift around much, but it's always nice to have another project bag.

It's a very nice swift. It moves well, Tiny can use it without any problem. I may let her skein up a few acrylic balls just for the fun of it. Of course it also works very well to make balls from skeins. Maybe one of these days I'll get a ball wonder too....

One of the things I really like is that the end pegs are adjustable. I may even mark a 2 yard skein or something and skip the Niddy Noddy on some of my spinning projects. It's just a thought, we'll see how that turns out.

That's about it for now. The plan for now is to get everything set for the TDF to start on the 5th! Part of the Tour on Revelry is to post daily updates online about progress. Not sure if I want to do daily posts here too, or just end up with some longer posts for a few weeks, I guess we'll see what kind of time Tiny leaves me with.

The Swift is on Its Way

Well, I finally did it. At about 9:30 this morning, I ordered a swift from Paradise Fibers. Still waiting on the ball wonder, but according to some Pinterest post, I can use my stand mixer and a toilet paper tube.



Not a whole lot else going on these days. Despite the gap in mitts, I've still got "second mitt syndrome." Maybe I should start a graph for that project too.



Anyway, until Thursday, here is a video about my new swift.