... nits ... little balls of material, from the warps and woofs

I think I've always referred to that phemonemon (the little balls, not the picking them off) as "pilling," which would make the little balls pills. ofTroy? You're our resource on knitting and weaving and such.

And speaking of nit-picking, in my experience it's always been a "fine-toothed comb". Anybody want to run a quick informal geographic distribution survey? My exposure is NYC/Boston area, mostly.