Carding Tutorial

I recently got my drum carder back after a brief hiatus, and now I want to card All The Things! It started with these bundles of Hello Yarn Club Fiber:


(Original fiber on the right in all pictures)

.....moved on to this:



...and then came the Wensleydale (as usual):



A few people expressed interest in a wee photo tutorial of this process, so I decided to document the whole thing, and HERE YA GO!

STACIE'S SWIFTY CARDING TUTORIAL!

Step One:

Find a nice fiber with hearty contrast and make sure the colors don't bleed into each other too much. I'm using HY "Pate de Fruit" in Rambouillet.

Step Two:

I usually fold up my fiber and align the colors to get a better idea of just how many breaks I should make. In this case, I'm going with the darkest blue-grey, light blue, mint green, ochres, that coral-esque color, brightest pinks, darker purples, and the brown-purple tone.

Step Three:

Tear it all apart! I tear it up as close to the color splits as I can, but I don't worry too much about other colors getting in there. That will just add to the heathering of each batt.

Step Four:

Open up each bundle of color and run it through the carder. Be patient, take your time. This picture isn't that great, but I really make sure to open things up and spread out any errant colors.

Step Five:

Here are 2 of the color bundles run through the carder. You can see that there is a little bit of striping in the closer one, that's because I only ran it through the carder once at this point, so the colors aren't completely blended.

Step Six:

Here are all 8 of the colors, having gone through the carder once. Some of these are really close in tone (especially those two on the left), but I'm going to run them through a second time and see how they come out before deciding if I want to combine them.

Step Seven:

....And here they are after the second pass through the carder. The colors are better blended. I could run them through a third (or fourth) time at this point, but I'm happy with how they look now.

Step Eight:

Bundle 'em up and admire your work! The lighter bundles here are all very close, but I think I can use them nicely for some colorwork, with subtle changes.

Now go spin them up!

Thanks for reading, and I hope this all makes sense!

Batts, Or A New Crazy Beginning

I was teaching a Non-Adhesive Bookbinding course this past week. I've been teaching this specific course for about 8 1/2 years now. I don't think that I am burnt out on teaching this, but I have seen a lot of the "standard" problems that arise. So I discuss them. This has led to the core curriculum of the course being completed in 3 or 4 days, and this is a 5 day class. I have a bunch of things up my sleeves for such occasions, but at this point, I'm realizing that those things up my sleeve have also become a part of MY curriculum when teaching the course, such as this Secret Belgian Binding. I don't know if this progression is good or bad.

Meanwhile, in the world of fiber:

I finally got a chance to play with my drum carder - I am participating in a batt swap, and these are my very first batts, heading out to Maryland. Since I wasn't quite sure of what I was doing, along with feeling a bit adventurous, I carded up a little bit of everything in nature colors. These batts are made up of merino, corriedale, a bit of soy silk, and some sparkle and camel down. I'm happy with them; I hope my swap partner enjoys them.

The drum carding process is a ton of fun, but also a bit overwhelming! So many possibilities! I'm reading up a bit more on what I can do, and hoping to get around to dying some fiber specifically for carding. I'm enjoying the blending possibilities, both for colors AND fibers. And what girl doesn't liek a wee bit of sparkle in her life?