If you remember, back in May I purchased a fleece while at the Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival. It was a Texel Cross breed and the crimp was just lovely. I washed it a couple of weeks ago, and last night, the wool combs that I ordered off Etsy arrived, so I decided I had to play with fiber!
Wool combs look like weapons and they are certainly sharp enough that they could be! Back in olden days, there were guilds who essentially controlled wool combs and made their living doing nothing but preparing fiber for spinning. If you want an interesting read, here’s an article on that period of history.
To use them, the first step is to load the stationary comb with the fleece with the tips of the fleece on the outside of the comb.
You then take the second comb, and comb through the fiber in a perpendicular manner. You do this until the majority of the fiber is on the moving comb. Check what is left on the stationary comb, because it may not be very good fleece, which was the case with mine last night.
You then take the moving comb and move it against the stationary comb to have the wool change combs again. All this is doing is fluffing and aligning the fibers.
Finally, when you’re satisfied with the number of passes (I did another full set because I had some stuck spots I wanted to work out), you will grab a tool called a diz, or if you don’t have one, which was my case last night, you will gently pull on the fiber and create a long length of fiber. At this point, you can roll it up and it’s all ready for spinning!
I definitely have some practice that is needed for using the combs, but it was fun to play with them last night. I can tell that there is still some lanolin left in the fleece after the two washes, but not enough to put it through another wash right now. I’ll be combing this fleece as I go, so this may take a very long time!
Oh, and if you’re interested in the wool combs, here’s a link. The crafter makes them using their 3D printer, which makes them very light weight, which is good on my wrist. It also makes it much less expensive than some of the more traditional models.
Stay crafty!