“I” (except really it was my husband) made a hackle, which is a fiber combing device that you can make hand-pulled roving with. It only took an evening to make the whole thing, load it up with fiber, and test it out. I managed to get some pretty great roving on my first try with only a couple of accidental breaks or uneven spots. I found a very good set of instructions on the internet and bought some plastic combs. Adam covered the wood base with rubbery stuff so it wouldn’t scratch the table and screwed all the combs for me. (As a female, even though I am capable of constructing things like this myself, I’d probably make some silly mistake and drill though the table… or my hand, so I recruited the man of the house do the work.) Here’s the finished hackle:

I used the beige button on the left as a diz. The holes were much larger than most people would want to use, but naturally I had to include lots of chunky, hard-to-handle fibers in order to make everything as hard as possible:

Here it is loaded up with merino/tencel fiber, locks, and holographic angelina:

This particular fiber was very easy to pull off the hackle. When I tried it later with 100% merino top, it was much harder to pull and my hands got tired almost immediately. I will stick to blends just like this one in the future:

2 fiber loads yielded 4 balls of the awesomest hand-pulled roving known to man:

Spun and on the bobbin: