Chocolate and Fiber

Do you ever feel blessed? I do. I have a wonderful family and especially two wonderful daughters. One of my daughters went on a trip with her family recently. They decided to drive to New York to visit my Mom for Thanksgiving. Well, they were able to stop and see lots of things and one of the places they stopped, that we used to go to when our girls were little, was HERSHEY, PA. If you have never been to Hershey, it is a cute town to visit and they have a museum type ride set up and store, of course, to go to. There is even an amusement park there.
I absolutely love the peanut butter ice cream sauce and now they have Cinnamon Chips! They have had the chips for a while, but I haven't been able to find them here. Rebekah has found them a couple of times, but not in a long time. Well, while at Hershey, they purchased some peanut butter sauce and cinnamon chips for me! I am excited and last night I came home and had peanut butter sauce on chocolate ice cream. Pure delight!In my last post, I showed my new stash to you. One of the items that I showed was this red bag of wool. I wanted to show you that it isn't sitting hidden in my fiber closet, but it is being prepared to spin. Yippee! I am so excited. So the picture below is the fiber, still in the bag.

I removed the fiber and fluffed it up with my hands, because Himself the picker is back at Mary's and truthfully, I don't need it for only 8 oz of fiber. So, I picked it apart and fluffed it. It is some of the nicest fiber that I have worked with. Below you can see some of it on my Ashford drum carder. To card you place small amounts on the tray and then turn the handle. The small drum will pick it up and feed it onto the big drum. Occasionally, you will get a little bit sticking to the smaller drum, but you can get that off later. When the larger drum is full, basically to the top of those little spikey teeth, you will use a tool, called a doffing tool, to remove the fiber from the drum. The doffing tool actually looks like a knitting needle with a handle.

Here is my 8 ounces of fluff! And fluff it is. It came out sooo pretty and fluffy. I just love it. This went from fitting into that small plastic bag to this huge pile. That little ruler in front of the pile is 5 inches tall. Pretty amazing, isn't it?