Combing extrafine merino for the Muness Shawl
Here’s a video of combing.
Notes:
I’m combing 13.5m merino and blending in some 15m merino as I go. You’ll see some different staple lengths.
The combs are mismatched! The comb on the pad only has 2 rows of extrafine spaced tines, but it is drilled out to fit the pad. If I had drilled out the 3 row comb handle, I would have used both 3 row/extra fine combs.
It was 14F and super dry, so the static is a bit crazy. The mister just holds water. Sometimes I use combing milk. Usually, I have a bit of leave in conditioner in the water, but the conditioner was up two flights of stairs and I was feeling lazy!
99% of the time, I load the combs with the butt end of the lock on the tines, and that’s what I’ve got here. If the fleece has brittle tips, I swap that around so the tips break off on the first pass. I do a few passes from right to left, changing the angles as I go. Then I swap and go from left to right. Occasionally, I’ll loosen the bundle on the combs by pulling straight out and rocking the fiber a bit. You’ll also see me spreading the fiber vertically on the stationary comb. I didn’t want to use too much force while combing such fine wool, and opening the fiber bundle across the comb height protects the fiber and makes it easier to comb. This more messing around than you’d need to do with different wool.
I’m using a tiny hole on the diz because I’m spinning about 110 wpi singles.
Spindles In the Wild 