First Wool Combing Experience

I went to a GLASG meeting today, borrowed a set of wool combs, and was lucky enough to be gifted some Dorset fleece as well. 

I set it up soon after dinner, and it was a fun experience!


The combing process start out looking like this:

You can see the end of the fiber has this brownish wiggly bits where the fleece was attached to the sheep. The combing process removed the shorter fiber, vegetable matters, dust, and naps. Then, after the fleece has been combed four to six times, I diz it off the comb by pulling the diz and fiber towards me, then holding the top while shoving the diz back into the fiber, and repeat.

I found out today that diz is not flat, but rather it is curved. The concave side faces the comb. GLAGS's loaner wool comb kit came with a really nice coconut diz.

I learned today that the hole size on the diz is the maximum thickness the top can spin. 

Three hours of hard work later, I only yielded 1 oz of combed top. Here's a picture of my cute babies:

I loved seeing the dirty, weird looking fleece turn into fluffy soft combed top. It is not a fast process. It is more a "labor of love". I don't know if I can realistically spend 12 hours combing top to prepare 4 oz of fiber to spin. Of course, the spinning process will take a lot of time too, so by the time it becomes yarn, or by the time it becomes a finished product, months could've passed. Another way to think about it is if I process my own fleece and dye my own yarn, my entertainment cost will plummet and this will probably be the cheapest hobby around. If I am broke, then I should really consider it.

If you notice, the nests of wool top are not all the same color. Some are more yellow. I have no idea why, but I'm chalking it up to the natural variation in fleece color.

This is what my floor looked like after 3 hours:

There was an amazing amount of dust and naps. Thank goodness I listened to today's teacher and protected my floor with an old bed-sheet. A lot of the fiber was wasted. I yielded 1 oz of combed top, but I got about 1.5 oz of fiber that's too short or too nappy. I kept them because I didn't want to just throw them away. Maybe next month I will try to borrow a drum carder from GLASG to take care of the reject pile.