Triple Picker

It was a beautiful day to be driving out to Chilliwack to pick up my Triple Picker today. Not too hot. Traffic was light. We were greeted at the door by Paula and Pumpkin the cat. Their farm is absolutely amazing! Not only did we leave with a Triple Picker but Paula gave us a big bag of green beans, apricots, tomatoes & cucumbers!

They can't stress enough about the safety of using one of these. Warnings and caution stickers were all over the picker. It came with safety bars and a padlock. Rick took one look at it and insisted on a side trip to Lee Valley Tools for leather gloves. Good thing these gloves are long. I can see myself raking my arms over the nails.

I LOVE my Triple Picker. I tried it out on a fleece that I call my dirty little secret. It's a Romney cross - possibly merino cross, I think. I was not as careful with the washing as I could have been and the locks matted. Then I tried to salvage it by dyeing it in an Indigo bath last summer. By the end of it all, it was quite matted and really difficult to tease apart. I should have known better.

I pulled it out today and put some of it through the picker. What I thought was unusable came out so nice and fluffy! 1/2 hour of picking gave me 3/4 full garbage bag. Some bits were put through twice because it was so badly matted.

The Triple Picker opens up the fibre but it doesn't pick out second cuts. It does flick out quite a bit of VM, though. I think, with some of the finer fibres, I'll probably still hand tease first. This stuff is good enough to spin as is without carding it into batts.

I think I need to go spin a sample now. :)