The picker came yesterday, and we are looking forward to getting it going.  The carder is going to be delivered tomorrow.

Just a quick recap, we ordered a Big Tom carder and a Bench Picker from Fancy-Kitty.com.

All I have to say about the picker is

WOW!!!

It is amazing!  I had seen pictures of it and knew that it was good workmanship but it is beautiful!  The corners are perfect, the top fits like a glove, the legs were so simple to put on, it is great!!

Julia texted me a picture yesterday of a large box on our front porch.  I was excited.

When I got home, we started to unpack it and put it together.  One of the great things was a very nice note that was on the box!

This is just even more proof that Ron from Fancy-Kitty has the best customer service out there!!

We opened up the box and it was packed wonderfully.  I took each piece out and it was like a perfectly put together puzzle.  All the parts were together except for the legs.  They were separate.  Here are some pictures from the opening of the box.

This is just an extra piece of wood to stabilize the box, and to protect the lid.  I will be using this piece of wood with my scroll saw (Thanks Ron!!)

This is the top of the picker.  It was well wrapped in padding.

Here you can see the legs, instructions, additional hardware and the inside of the picker.

Now I needed to put the legs on.  This was much easier than I thought it would be.  Not only is everything pre-drilled, but very well thought out.  You are not screwing wood nails in to the wood to attach the legs.  The legs are held on by bolt into pre-installed nuts (not sure if that is the right word for the piece that the bolt screws in to but it made assembly easy as pie without the crust!)  I just set the picker on its side and attached one set of legs and then the other.  Flipped it over and then attached the other side and then attached the bottom rung and we were ready to go!

Here is the picker all put together.  Look how beautiful it is.  Ron put on a tung oil finish on it for us, so it is just beautiful (I’m sure it would be just as beautiful without the finish but I like having the wood finished!)

Here you can see the insides of the picker.  You can see some of the 424 stainless steel teeth that will pick the fibers apart.  It is a scary tool, and not something that the girls will be using.

This thing looks like it is an ancient torture device!  Watch out!!

Why did we choose this picker over the more commonly used (at least from what I have seen) swinging pickers?  SAFETY!!  The swinging pickers look so dangerous to me with the teeth sticking out from the bottom of the swinging arm.  Now all the teeth are in the box, away from our hands and other people.  It’s still not 100% safe, but with some safety precautions (finger guard and common sense) we should be fine!

Once again, I want to thank Ron Anderson from Fancy-Kitty, he has been a pleasure to work with.  I have sent him emails at 9:00 pm our time (11:00 pm his time) and he has responded within minutes (I think he may be one of the few people that is at his computer more than I am).  I’m not sure when he finds time to work on building such great equipment.

If you are thinking of getting a picker or carder, check out Fancy-Kitty!

As I mentioned 2 days ago, we have purchased a Fancy-Kitty Drum Carder Big Tom drum carder.

2 years ago, I had no idea what carding was (I thought that is what they did at bars and DairyMart), or what anything to do with fiber was.  Now that we’ve owned alpacas, done shearing 2 years now, and have done a lot of research in to starting our own fiber mill, I can say honestly, I know just a little bit more than I did 2 years ago, but I’m still not even close to being an expert! 

What a drum carder will do is help you prepare your fiber so you can either felt with it or spin it.  It helps align the fibers so they are all more or less going in the same direction.  It will remove some of the vegetable matter (VM), it will take out any knots or stuck fiber.  Carding is also a great way to combine fibers.  If you are wanting to combine wool and alpaca, or cashmere & silk, or combine colors, carding is a great way to do this.

Once you card, you are left with a batt or rovings (depending on how you remove the fiber from the drum).  We will mainly be doing batts and using them from there.

Carding can be done by hand with hand carders (look like enlarged dog brushes) but we decided that we would like to go a little bit larger and get a drum carder.  We have decided on the Big Tom carder from Fancy-Kitty.

We decided to go electric after talking to a few people that have drum carders and all of them have said that they wish they had just started out with electric ones right away.  So we decided to get the electric instead of the hand crank varieties.

What I like about the Big Tom is that it uses 2 motors, one for the licker-in (smaller drum) and one for the swift (larger drum).  This will allow us much more control on the ratio between the 2 drums.  Most carders use one motor and you have a set ratio 1:4 or 1:5.  Now we can get a wide range of ratios and play with it to see what works best for the type of fiber we are working with.

Below I’ll add a great video of carding.  She is using a Pat Green carder (one we considered).  She makes some beautiful products.

I can’t wait to add our own videos next week!!