Things have slowed down enough at the campground so that I can play with my wool while waiting for guests to come off of the road in the evening.  My current favorite wooly pursuit is spinning and I don’t like to simply buy prepared roving from the store and make yarn.  No, no!  I like to buy a bag of dirty fleece from a shepard at the farm or at a fair, wash it until I have great piles of wooly stuff and then spin it into yarn you’d never find in a normal store.

One part of the process is the picking…this comes after the fleece is washed and before it’s ready for spinning…it’s the step that creates clouds of open wool.  For a long while, I’ve done this part very slowly in the most primitive fashion…with my fingers…think of it as running your fingers through your long hair until all the snarls are out and it looks like you have lots more hair than you started with.  But when you’re playing with a 6 pound fleece, your fingers get very tired quickly!

The other day Dad made me a picking board like one I saw at the Common Ground fair a couple of weeks ago.  I’m posting these pictures for others who might like to make their own ingenious device because I’m thrilled with the results.

I belong to a Yahoo Spinning group that has been the most wonderful resource of information anyone can imagine and this is particularly posting is in reference to the recent questions I’ve been asking while deciding about buying an expensive piece of processing equipment…more on that later…

If you are looking for an inexpensive way to spare your hands and fingers undue wear and tear, consider this tablet.

The carding cloth was shipped overnight from Howard Brush Company of Rhode Island, it took less than an hour to build the tablet and because I have it sitting on a piece of non-skid shelf liner, it doesn’t move…a wonderfully useful device for less than $60.

If you are making your own, make certain that the plywood under the cloth is at least 3/4″ so that it doesn’t bend when you’re picking the fiber.  Mine has the cloth stapled to the background but when I have a chance I’m going to glue it in place with contact cement so that it doesn’t lift at all.