still playing with fiber

I decided to wash some individual merino locks in cotton hankies as Judith MacKenzie describes in her video (A Spinner's Toolbox, I think, but it might have been one of the others. I have all of them. Huge kudos to Interweave for making spinning videos available by download. I watch them on my iPad and learn so much!). I carefully pulled some locks that were about the same length out of the fleece and wrapped them burrito-style in a hankie, then simmered them on the stove in soapy water. It worked great!

Here they are after drying.
The stained tips weren't an issue as they came off with a gentle brush of the flick carder.
I didn't worry about keeping the tip ends sorted while I flick carded because it's easy to tell which end is the tip by gently rubbing the lock between my fingers. The lock will "walk" toward the tip end. I spin from the tip end for consistency.
These little locks don't need to be combed. They spin lace weight yarn beautifully from the lock.

In other news, we are back into the deep freeze today after another unusually warm few days. According to the forecast this cycle will continue as very mild temperatures will be here by the end of the week. (I hope I didn't just jinx the warm spell by actually typing it here.)

I was out with the dogs the other night and the trees were so pretty! There were little icicles hanging from the branches while soft snow coated the tops of them.

I just received the following blog comment from Keri,

What beautiful results! I'm a little nervous - I too have a superfine merino fleece and just ordered the mini combs but not the extra fine mini's. Now I'm starting to worry I should have ordered those. Did you get bad results with your regular minis?

I didn't have much luck combing my super-fine merino fleece on the mini combs. The fiber was neppy. However, the mini combs are superb for general use and easier to use because you don't need as much strength to pull the fiber through the combs. My suggestion is to have both if you can swing it.