Getting to grips with my hackle

My husband made me a hackle yesterday. He makes most of my spinning and weaving equipment. Mostly it's equipment that I've never used, and he has never even seen, so the Mark I prototypes can be fairly weird. The hackle seems straightforward though, a sturdy piece of wood with some wicked pointy nails in it.

First learning point: it doesn't like fleeces that are felty. My Romney and my Herdwick are a bit felted, and it isn't a miracle worker.  Nor does it like my very fine, crimpy BFL/Leicester long wool lamb's fleece. So it's the compost bin for the first two, and the dog combs for the third.

Second learning point: for a beginner the bendy rubber dog comb is safer than a proper wool comb. I was taking all sorts of liberties that I'm sure a real wool comb wouldn't have let me get away with.

Third learning point: I can only do so much before my muscles get stiff and achey. A ball of sock yarn would take me a week on today's showing. Then again, if I hadn't wasted so much energy on terminally felted fleece, I could have combed a lot more of the downs wool (staple length 3", just about enough as it turned out).

Fourth learning point: it seemed to make very little difference whether I used a diz or not to pull the roving off into long narrow strips, which I wound into nests.

Fifth learning point: I still haven't got the hang of a short forward draw.

My husband is now feeling ready to graduate from pine to proper grown-up hardwood. We found a DIY store in our town which sells hardwood, and bought a short plank of something unpronouncable. Also a large bag of very scary nails. I'm hoping these will become a set of wool combs at some point.



My big Christmas present this year was a fleece picker, again home-made, and again we've neither of us ever seen a "real" one. It's fun to use, but it is REALLY hard on the arm and shoulder muscles, and I can only do a handful of fleece about the size of a clown wig at a time. It does open up fleece nicely though, to about snow shower thickness that is then easy to card.

I'm a bit puzzled about where to store it, as it's the size of a small suitcase and about as heavy. Come to think of it, storing it in a suitcase might be a good safety measure.