Preparing for the Tour, part 1: introducing the picker

So, I mentioned that the fibre blending for my Tour de Fleece was a bit of an adventure.  The wool, once cleaned of the pond scum (Thank you, Geodyne!) looked like this:

The palest grey, and pretty clean.  (OK, maybe there’s a bit of pond still visible on the right there.  Don’t worry; it soon falls off).  The prolonged soak and re-wash had left it somewhat compacted.  Not felted, but not loose and airy, either, so there was no way it was going to go through the drum carder in that state.  I decided it was due a trip through the picker – a device that seems to be pretty much unheard of on this side of the pond.  That’s the picker that it’s sitting on, in that photo up there.  Inside, it looks like this:

Scary medieval torture device, anyone?  The underside of the sliding lid has a similar arrangement of nails, and when moved up and down the box, it pulls fibre from the ‘in’ end to the ‘out’ end, across the nail beds, opening it up as it goes. As well as teasing (not ripping!) the fibre apart, a lot of ‘crud’ drops out – hence the detritus that has gathered on the bottom of the box between the nails.  Bye bye pond scum!

I don’t think I’d recommend this for a tender fleece, or for fime fibres, but it’s remarkably good at opening up compacted locks.  After a couple of trips through the picker, it looks like this:

This is much more ready for the drum carder  than the previous stuff.  It’s not as effective as flicking open locks, but it’s a lot faster – and in this case, the lock structure was pretty much lost sometime between shearing and washing. (And the washing didn’t help).  It’s kind of difficult to demonstrate the differences between before and after in the photographs, so let’s try a before-and-after, side-by-side shot, too:

See the difference so far? (before is on the left; after on the right).  The lock structure is still there, but the fibre is looser, more open.  If you put it on a lightbox, you’d be able to see through the ‘after’ stuff much more clearly than the ‘before’.

I said this was faster than flicking locks, and I meant it, but running several hundred grams through the picker still took an hour or two.  Like pretty much every piece of fibre prep equipment ever, you don’t wan’t to try and process too much at any one time: overload it, and it will be hard work, and a lot less effective.  And don’t think you’re going to be ripping your way through the stuff you felted with some ill-considered washing or dyeing choices, either: this is not a way to rescue a fleece from serious damage.

Next time?  We should be ready for the actual blending!

(For the curious: my wool picker is a Lil’ Dynamo.  I bought it a year or so ago, and this is the first time I’ve put it to any serious use.  I selected this model firstly because we have dogs, and the box design looks so much safer than the cradle types.  Secondly, the price is very reasonable, making it a feasible purchase for folks in the UK.)