When I get roving in the mail, I prefer it piled in a bag packed inside a box. I live in hot, humid east central Georgia (for the next week or so, then it'll be South Carolina) and I've noticed that rovings shipped in balls tend to roll around and get felty if they aren't put in a close fitting box. Especially rovings that are open and free flowing like the ones I prefer for long draw, and what happened to the angora sent like that was just heart breaking. A pile of roving packed loosely will shift around too, but not as much in my experience, and any damage seems to be concentrated in one area. However, both forms should be packaged in a box small enough to limit movement, and loose roving is free form enough to accept a wider range and shape of box.
I prefer fiber to be inside a bag because I've opened boxes to find fiber snagged on the corners and edges of the bits that you fold in, and occasionally even stuck to the tape. Fine and Luxury fibers seem to be experts at finding shaggy spots to tear itself up on. Dirt, dust and bits of cardboard in the fiber, boxes wilted from humidity, crushed, and coming home to find them sitting in the rain are other considerations too. One box was soaked with some sort of scented fluid that I assume was leaking out of something it was next to in shipment, but the fiber was protected inside it's plastic bag. It works the other way too, I'm sometimes able to smell a box of unbagged grease fleece when I'm coming up the walk, esp during the summer, and the boxes are usually grease spotted. My pet peeve is receiving a bunch of loose handfuls or really short pieces of roving torn off to make up the weight. I appreciate that they want me to get my money's worth, but I find that those bits are a huge pain in the butt when I wanted to paint the roving. It seems to take up differently when immersion dyed too. I usually end up not using those bits and sometimes that has effected the project I had planned when I purchased the fiber. Hmm, Thanks for mentioning the topic, I hadn't realized I was so picky. I hope my input helps. :) Enjay Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left. ~Hubert Humphrey ~ To stop mail temporarily mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: set nomail To restore send: set mail
