just the right thing

I once insisted that stinky raw fleece would never, ever follow me home--I was a clean, prepared fiber gal all the way. If you've been following along, you'll know that Em and I have purchased huge bags of Shetland from the trunk of a car in a a dark parking lot. We've brought home Caeser's eight pound corriedale fleece from a Spinner's Flock fleece fair. Eight and a half pounds of various raw alpaca blankets. A couple of llama fleeces from Llamafest. Another alpaca blanket from Michigan Fiber Fest last year. A Finn/Targhee lambs fleece via USPS. A handful of dirty, dirty Wensleydale from The Spinning Loft (Beth tried her hardest to talk me into processed or, at least, washed). I dunno what happened. Really, I don't.

I bought a drum carder to deal with all this fleece. Oddly, I haven't used it all that much. I prefer sitting here, usually at my desk, combing through small amounts at a time with a couple of metal dog combs. There's just something about combing that feels...magical. Opening up the clumped locks into soft fluff--like unwrapping little gifts. I kept thinking, in the back of my mind, that I really needed to look into getting some real combs one of these days.

When Andrea, of Wonder Why Alpaca Farm, mentioned she had fleece from some of her suri alpacas that was too long or too variegated in color for professional processing, I jumped in with the offer to see what I could do with it. I washed some from the first bag...Buccaneer's l-o-n-g cream and med brown.

Far too long for the drum carder. Really too much for my dog combs. This would be so much easier if I could get my hands on some real combs. Combs? Andrea asked. I have combs! A friend had loaned her some monstrous 5 pitch Indigo Hound combs pics at the bottom). And she loaned them to me.

So we played with some of Buccie's fleece. And then I tried out some of Caeser's corriedale. Absolutely what that fleece was waiting for all this time! But those combs really are monstrous. They're heavy and hard on my hands. I tried a bit of the lamb's fleece and it was too short stapled for the five pitch. My lovely Romeldale (two pounds, my only purchase at this year's MI Fiber Fest)

was too fine for them, too much of the staple was caught up in the rows of tines as waste. I started researching combs, even though I'm not in a position to buy any right now. I just wanted to be prepared in case of sudden turn around in circumstances or a relative offering Christmas gift of my choice (ha! like that would happen?). Anyway, after much reading, I finally settled on Valkyrie 2 pitch mini combs (which were out of production for 5 years or so but he'd just started back up). I even signed on to his mailing list to be notified when the 2 pitch combs were in stock again.

And then, Andrea said she'd like the combs back when the kids went back to school so she could give them a try. I spent one night combing Corriedale until 4 AM. The next day, as I caught up on email, I was sad to see that someone had offered some Indigo Hound combs and an Indigo Hound II It "free to a good home" (she didn't like combing and they were rusting with disuse) on Spindler's yahoo list. Wugh. I'd been combing, combing, combing and totally missed it. I was so bummed that I actually sent her an email:

Well, darn. While you were posting this offer, I was frantically using some Indigo Hound combs that I borrowed and need to return in a couple of days. A week just wasn't long enough to learn how to use combs and then actually comb everything I wanted to. And I missed your offer.

Good luck with the deluge of mail you've probably gotten. Sorry for adding to it, lol.

The next morning, I found this in my in box:

No, Shannon, you got in just under the wire and you are the winner for
the set of Indigo Hound combs.

Please send me your snail mail information.

She'd thrown all the responses in a hat and drew mine for the combs. How cool is that? Seriously. I wondered if they might be the very same monstrous combs I was borrowing from Andrea but I wasn't going to ask for details. They were a gift! She told me she'd get them in the mail as soon as the holiday (Labor Day) passed and I'd have them by the weekend. So exciting...

And then, I totally forgot about them as the kids went back to school that Tuesday and with Dave's accident early that Wednesday. Thoughts of fiber and combs and spindles and spinning were replaced with ICU, ventilator, life support, degree of burns, percentage of burns.

Finally, when Dave was doing better and I needed to finish up some of the spindles I'd been working on for that "emergency spindle order," I remembered the package. And I could not believe what was inside...

Not Indigo Hound combs as I expected but the very same 2 pitch Valkyrie mini combs I had decided on. These, from his original run. I don't know what kind of craziness it was that brought all of this together but it's just so full of awesome. Thank you, Veryl. Thank you so very much. Stealing some time to comb my lovely Romeldale with your absolutely perfect for it combs has been exactly what I needed. Just the right thing.