New Products! Bobbins and Combs

We have a couple of new products to announce! The first one is pretty straight forward so I will start with the new limited edition bobbins, and then tell you all about our new Extra Fine hand combs, with a wee story about what makes them so great.

We have had great success and feedback on our new-look black plastic bobbins, launched back in 2020 (see the blogpost). They have proven popular as well as sturdy and reliable. These bobbins are molded (not 3d printed) and are very strong, and we all love how we can see our yarns through the ends! So this year we are launching TWO new limited edition bobbin colours – same fab design and material, new colours!

Here is the collection! Standard black, with the new “Rubber Ducky” and “Frosty” We hope you will enjoy these bobbins! The yellow is vibrant and fun, will match up wonderfully with all your hot coloured fibres as well as bring some sunshine to your spin days. Frosty is a lovely gentle translucent, which will (like the black) go really well with any colour you spin, with the added fun of seeing your yarn through it too!

We hope you will enjoy these bobbins in your collection! As with all our limited edition colour bobbins, these will be available while stocks last. These are available now to order these from any of our Majacraft dealers.

New: Extra Fine Hand Combs

Our second new product to launch is our new Extra Fine hand combs, for all your luxury fibre prep and blending. We have been making hand combs for years, and have our trusted, tried and tested Majacraft method of setting the lovely smooth (not too sharp) tines in place, so they are solidly fixed, will not bend, and stay straight even after years of use. Our standard combs are FINE combs, suitable for anything 18 – 30 micron fibers, wonderful on most Merino, Corriedale, Romney, and other fine to medium fibres.

Our new combs are EXTRA fine, with the tines closer together while still super smooth and reliably straight.

The Extra Fine combs have helped me with my fibre preparation tremendously! I have used the standard Majacraft Fine Hand combs for many years with great success and pleasure, just the right size for my hands, the perfect weight, no injuries, and beautiful fibre. But over time the range of fibres I had in my stash expanded and I developed a taste for very fine fibres, such as beautiful cria alpaca fleece, softest baby camel, and other delightfully soft, very fine micron fleece (12-18micron). Then one day, I added a big bag of the most delicious Polwarth lamb to my stash – gorgeous! However, as lovely as it was, it proved a challenge to prepare for spinning. Washed alone did not deliver the result I wanted, as the staples were not defined and it was quite fluffy. It is also quite a tender fleece, and hand carding produced mostly nepps and not much else. I tried combing it with my standard combs, and it was an improvement but still had more nepps than I would happily want to pull out while spinning.

Enter the Extra Fine hand combs! Magic happened!

The difference was amazing, the Extra Fine combs gave me a beautiful preparation from this tricky fibre, almost no nepps, light and airy, and it spun into a very satisfying two ply yarn. I knitted up a swatch and was struck by how very light and soft the resulting fabric was, my goal now is to prep enough fibre to make a lovely Spring/Autumn weight jersey.

Since then I have also tested these combs with a range of other super fine fibres, including some lovely baby camel, blending it with silk and a touch of 14 micron merino for a magical mix. The combs are easy to handle and make hand combing a breeze.

Some things to know:

The Extra Fine combs can be used to also prepare 18+ micron fibre, however I would not recommend it, there will be more (unnecessary) waste, as these tines are really spaced to be their best with your finest fibres. In hand combing, it really is a case of needing the right tool for the job.

As with all hand combing of fleece, you will get some waste with these combs too. I keep mine and card it into batts for added texture or tweed style yarns.

Choose the standard Majacraft Fine Combs for all your fine to medium micron fibres, and the Extra Fine for your luxury fibres to create beautiful smooth, ready-to-spin preparations.

We hope you will have fun with our new bobbins and combs! We have enjoyed creating and developing them as quality tools that will give you years of enjoyment!