My new Lil Dynamo picker arrived on my front porch about an hour ago, and I’ve already tested it out and decided that I will use it to single-handedly take over the fiber universe. (Possibly double-handedly. I have two hands; I guess I may as well use them both.)
It has some mixed reviews online, but I am so glad I decided to give it a chance. It works perfectly for my needs. L.D.P. (already with the nicknames) took a pile of dyed Romney locks and turned them into a giant pile of cloud fluff in about 60 seconds. This fleece was clean and unmatted with very little veg matter so I don’t know how the Dynamo would handle difficult or delicate fibers, but these slid through it with no problems. When I fed a half-ounce at a time, the box looked too empty but the handle slid easily and finished in about 6 swipes. When I fed a full ounce, the in-box was full and there was some resistance required to hold the lid down while combing back and forth. Check out the before & after pics:
^ As you can see, a decent amount of the fiber stayed stuck in the points, but I was able to clean it out easily without poking myself.
The box itself is light enough that I, Natasha the Weakling, carried it upstairs without any trouble, but there’s enough weight to it, combined with rubber feet, that it stayed in place without sliding around on the table while in use. As I said, I was using a very clean fleece. I know some people use pickers to get out the veg matter, but all I got was some dust & dander that I can easily dump out:
For the grand finale of this review, words can’t express how much I LOVED spinning this fiber.
Between knitting, crocheting, carding, and spinning, my carpal tunnel syndrome has reached a scary level of severity in the past few months. But I was able to spin this fiber with no drafting, and therefore no pain. Since I only ran the fiber through the picker once, there were still curls here and there, mimicking the look of tail-spun locks without the hassle of having to tease each lock open individually. The finished yarn (shown above) reminds me a lot of Ozark Handspun.
In conclusion, this thing is AWESOME!! It took me longer to edit the photos and type this blog post than it did to prep and spin the fiber from start to finish. I wish I had more raw fleece on hand to play with.