Karen's Home on the Blog: Combing, revisited with pictures

Monday, February 13, 2006

Combing, revisited with pictures

Hi all,

I figure I'm missing just one picture to make this almost a picture perfect lesson in "how to comb a fleece".

Not that I have any experience or claim to be any good at it. But the picture sequence that the hubby took is pretty good.

I'm not at all sure that I'm not tossing out an awful lot of tog with the thel.

But I suppose I should back up a bit. Icelandic fleece comes in two coats. The longer outer coat can be anywhere from 4-6 inches long, and is called the Tog. The shorter and more fluffy inner coat is called Thel.

Spun together as a single, the yarn produced is called Lopi.

When they are seperated, and the tog is combed out and aligned, it can produce a very strong worsted yarn. This is often used for weaving, and sometimes for embrodiery. The thel would be used for knits, and felting.

I'm not a knitter, I'm a weaver. And a spinner. I'm hoping someday to produce enough worsted Tog yarn to weave a largish piece of fabric. But since I'm still at the combing out the first fleece stage, this goal is very far away. Very very far away.

Especially when I'd much rather spin for pleasure from commercially prepared roving. Perhaps if I didn't have a day job....

From the looks of it, I'm going to have to give the thel another wash to get more of the lanolin out.

Pulling out the locks from the fleece, hanging on the edge of the warp-weighted loom.

The locks loaded on one of the combs. That missing picture that I mentioned is a picture of just one lock of fleece.

Take the second comb and swipe at the locks of fleece several times. Most of what will transfer will be tog.

Here I'm pulling the remaining tog out of the first comb. I've been using the dog comb for a finer filter then I'm getting with the viking combs. Some of the thel comes out with the tog and this can help separate it just that little bit faster.