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Everyone has a kryptonite. There’s lots of different kryptonites, but I’m thinking more along the lines of the regular old green kind that just makes your superhero self weak and sweaty.

When it comes to spinning and craft related things, my kryptonite is definitely in preparation. In particular using hand cards on their own. What’s worse, is that I’m really finicky about the condition of fibers, so if it needs more prep, I’m compelled to do whatever it takes to fix it. Otherwise it’ll haunt me.

I also suck eggs when it comes to hand carding.

With wool I usually use a large metal comb (dog grooming comb) to open up the locks after washing, then pick by hand, and run the wool through the drum carder and make batts. With down; if it’s in a cloud I spin it from the cloud. With hairy stuff like mohair I card it on the drum carder to loosen it up and tease it with my finger tip as I spin. I found a big old chunk of kryptonite though. Down in the middle of my bag of yak down it got compacted. I took the compacted down out and waited for it to grow. It sat there. It didn’t grow, it didn’t fluff. It just sat there. I waited two hours. It just sat, still compacted, looking at me.

I saw the green glow of kryptonite.

That’s when I realized I could either spin something else or give handcarding another shot. First I tried carding the yak down as if it were short wool into some rolags, that left sort of incomprehensibly filmy rolls that wanted to dissolve when touched. Then I tried just teasing and fluffing, which left me with clouds very light and fluffy, but before I could spin them the heater fan kicked on and my clouds floated around the room.

Fine. Stupid kryptonite.

I hunted down my puni stick (which is a size 11 knitting needle sans mate) and made a nice loose yak puni. That actually worked quite well. And it matched the single (spun from non-compacted down) that was already on the bobbin.

So that’s my day, unless you want the gruesome details of my migraine (not related to fiber processing) or the intimate points of scrubbing down the refrigerator shelves.