Fiber Monday - New toy

I think I mentioned in my post about the Sheep and Wool Festival that I splurged and bought a new fiber tool. It's a Clemes & Clemes Lock Pop, otherwise known as the most expensive block of wood I have ever bought. 


So why did I? I have a lot of fleeces that need to be processed and turned into yarn. I enjoy the spinning part, but am not overly fond of the combing or carding part. It's just super time and labor intensive. So I put it off. But if I don't prep the wool, I can't spin it. I was beginning to think it might be worth it just to send all the fleeces I have to a mill and accept the fact I should just buy fiber ready to spin. And then I tried the Lock Pop at the festival. 

It doesn't look like much, but it works amazingly well. So well I bought it. What does it do? 

Here are a pile of Cotswold locks that I dyed. You can see they are all mixed up together. There is no way to spin these without opening them up and getting the fibers all going the same way. 


I had combed some. I can get about four locks on a comb at a time. (Overloading a comb just makes it harder to do.) It takes about ten minutes to go from loading the comb to ending up with fiber I can spin. I probably wouldn't be able to do that little pile of locks in an hour. Here is where my new tool is worth every penny. 

I pull out a lock,


Press it onto the teeth, then pop it up. (Another benefit it that there is very little strain on my arms and hands, which is not the case with wool combs.) I do one end then flip it around and do the other end. 


After about a minute, I have a lock all opened up and ready to go. I thought I could spin it in this form, so I tried it and it worked well. It is so much faster and easier.


Here is what the yarn looks like. There is no discernable difference between the combed yarn and the lock popped yarn. (I'm spinning this for warp. My plan is to weave yardage so I can see something with it.)


Also this past week I warped my rigid heddle loom. Along with guest towels, I'll be weaving wool scarves for the holiday market. Here is the beginnings of the first one. 


I also plied some yarn I had been spinning. Thus is 50% merino wool and 50% mulberry silk. It's lace weight and I think it would be a very pretty knitted lace shawl. I have another skein of it that I'm finishing up.


Here's a close-up. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but the silk gives it a very pretty shine. 



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