Carding Wool for the Season

Finally a nice, not-too-hot or humid or rainy day where I can be outside for carding fiber.  It's definitely a task for spring and fall.

Last week, I used my new wool picker (Still need to work up that post) to open the fibers on a really nice wool and silk mix.  The bottom of the bag had gotten mashed, and that layer was getting difficult to spin, even after dizzing it.  So today I did the next step in preparing the fiber for spinning: Carding it on my Patrick Green carding machine.

Here is the carder (on Gramma Pickles' little card table!), loaded up with fiber to be carded and combed in preparation for spinning.  2 or 3 loads like this was enough to make a good-sized batt. 

Carding can be hard work, so I don't always look forward to it.  But low-and-behold, having done the previous step of picking the fiber and opening it beforehand, things went a lot smoother this afternoon.

I carded that whole bag of wool and silk "cloud" into about a dozen batts.

I was sitting next to a giant stand of purple asters which are in full bloom.  At any given moment, there were a dozen butterflies on it, and countless bees diligently doing their work gathering nectar and pollen.  They didn't seem at all disturbed by the carding process.

They look a little funny because I've started rolling them into rolags, straight off the drum carder.  I can't remember where I learned that, or I would give that person credit!   Although I have learned to spin off of a batt (It's not hard), the rolags are a little more compact.  It's like the fiber knows what to do and almost spins itself out of the rolag.  Well -- not quite.

I am preparing for tomorrow afternoon.  I volunteered to spin at an open house for one of the local alpaca farms in Neenah.  There will be a few other spinners there, too.  I decided to stick with my old standard -- nothing fancy spinning-- because it's too easy to loose track of what you're doing when you're chatting with the other ladies.  

I really do want to start on that fancy art yarn with an art batt ... Soon, but I think that's best done at home where no one will be watching me!

Carding an Art Batt

Freshly carded art batt, looking very much like a cocoon!

Sometimes crafting is like "shaving yaks."  In order to do one thing, you need infrastructure to support it, which means you have to get other things ready before you can "do the thing."

Before I can spin an art batt, I have to have an art batt to start with.  Fortunately, I was able to order a few online to get me started.  So I can study how it comes out, the structure, the color and texture mixes, what fibers and in what proportion ...  Then comes collecting and gathering your fibers.

I ordered a couple finished art batts from Wild Thyme.

I ordered the ingredients from Big Sky Fiber Arts.  They send a bag of mixed fibers in different color ways.  I ordered purples and greens.

This is how they looked released and unwrapped from the bag.  It still needed to be carded together.    Really a nice combination!    Ah-- but how to do that without blending all the fibers into mud?

 One of the videos I watched recommends layering your chosen fibers into a sandwich, that you can then feed into your carding machine. 

Here's the first batt.

You can see this one rolled up into a rolag at the top of this post.  

Here's the second one.  This one is a little more blended -- like a landscape.

I kept trying to feed in the fiber that was sticking to the intake roller, and things got progressively more mixed.  I am looking forward to spinning these batts!

For my own reference, I am also adding some of the videos I watched to learn this technique:



Fortunately, there are some great how-to videos out there on YouTube.  I found this one by Ashley Martineau where she uses a sandwich technique that seemed to get good results.



Here's another one where she uses a "painterly technique" where she bypasses the intake roll, and just "paints" the fibers on the top roll.




Here's one from Blue Mountain Hand Crafts.  I am intrigued by the "fiber salad" she starts with and the beautiful batt that results!

Here's a tutorial from Staunch Fibers:
How to Give Forgotten Fibers a Bat-tacular Makeover.

Baa Baa Black Sheep Have You any Wool?

 

Fall is the perfect time for carding wool -- Outside, so the bits of grass and hay and other debris left in the raw washed wool can fall outside.

 This is the carding machine.  Basically the point is to comb the wool fleece, and to get all the fibers going in the same direction.  Also helps to fluff things up, and make it easier to spin.  This carding machine makes the work go a whole lot faster than using the hand combs (basically these are kind of like dog brushes -- That's what the carding cloth is like : Lots of metal needles that combs the wool.

 

 

You lay the raw washed wool in the feeder tray and turn the crank.  It pulls the fibers onto the rollers.  The small roller sorts out the shorter fibers -- the ones you may not want to keep, while letting the longer staples through to the bigger roller.  After a while, the big roller fills up, and you can peel off the fluffy newly combed batt :

I worked at it for about 3 hours -- great exercise for upper-body strength, and have a box of newly carded wool ready for spinning.

Detail of one of the newly carded batts.

Like soft clouds!

All that work, and I still have 2/3 of that fleece to process.