Carding fun
Oct. 4th, 2025 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
merrileemakesMy local spinners and weavers group had a carding fun day which was fun because a) hanging out with fibre peps is great and b) it gave me a reason to drag out and go through all the fibre I have stashed away.
Carding is one method for preparing fibre to spin. The fun day focused on drum carders and blending boards, but there are also hand carders which do similar things on a smaller scale. You can use carding to prepare fleece for spinning but most of the people at the fun day were using carding to combine different fibres and colours to make cool blends to spin.
Before the carding day I went through most of my fibre and sorted it into the different components you need to successfully blend fibres. I use the sandwich approach to carding by sorting fibres into 'bread', 'filling' and 'seasoning'.
These fibres are all my 'bread' options. They're smooth, have a moderate staple length and there's plenty of them. These are great fibres to make the base layer of any carded fibre. Most of this is dyed alpaca fleece, but there's also some hand dyed braids and some commercial alpaca/silk fibre.
These are my 'filling' fibres. They're smaller quantities, or a bit different. There's some mohair (I think) fleece, some Merino and sparkle blends, some baby camel/silk blends and a few left overs from other projects. These will work well on top of the bread but won't be the basis of any carded fibre.
Finally, there's the fun stuff! The seasoning. The random bits and pieces to sprinkle over the top to add some zing. There's some great treasures here - mohair locks, longwool locks, sparkle and many different kinds of silk.
I loaded up all this fibre, plus my drum carder and blending board, for the fun day. My plan was to take heaps of stuff and get other people to use it so I can come home with less fluff and make room in my stash. ... Sadly, everyone else at the carding fun day had exactly this approach. So I mostly used their fibre and not my own, and also brought home much of my own fibre. In fact, I think I came home with more than what I started with. But still, I had fun!
Here's two different blends I made that day. The first is this collection of mystery wool in similar colours with some teal tussah silk (a wild species of silkworm that makes shorter, less shiny silk).
I held the 4 different colous of wool fibre in hand and pulled off staple lengths of all of them at once, making little multicoloured tufts. I then blended these on the drum carder to make a mottled brownish fibre.
Once I had a nice smooth 'bread' base of wool fibre on the drum carder it's time to go straight to some seasoning. The tussah silk was very short, but very colourful.
Once I'd added enough silk it's time to take the fibre off the drum carder. I decided to try a new technique where you use a diz (a thing with a hole in it - almost any thing will do) and pull of a long fibre snake (called roving).
Dizzing off the drum carder was honestly fussy and not fun. The drum kept rolling around and the long snake of fibre kept getting caught on the teeth, or getting eaten by the drum carder and it moved. But it did make a sweet little pile of fluff.
Drum carding is quite tiring on the arms, so after lunch I switched to using my blending board. I also challenged myself to pick some colours that I would never choose normally. Hence this radiant mess.
This is some fluro orange Merino and pink Merino plus some sari silk waste (long threads of mulberry silk thread left over from weaving saris). Blending boards use the same sandwich approach as drum carders. So I laid down my breaddy base of hi vis orange fibre.
Then lay down a bit of pink to add some interest.
Then it was time for the sari silk. It was super long so I ended up cutting it into smaller pieces. Maybe too small, but oh well. Onto the blending board they go.
Once I'd added all the fibre I used some sticks to pick up and roll the fibre into little worms called rolags.
I think I like making rolags more than I like spinning them. They can look very aesthetic and they're fun to make. But they're probably my least favourite kind of spinning preperation to spin. Oh well.
I had fun at the carding day and I'm only a little mad that I came home with more fluff than when I left.
Carding is one method for preparing fibre to spin. The fun day focused on drum carders and blending boards, but there are also hand carders which do similar things on a smaller scale. You can use carding to prepare fleece for spinning but most of the people at the fun day were using carding to combine different fibres and colours to make cool blends to spin.
Before the carding day I went through most of my fibre and sorted it into the different components you need to successfully blend fibres. I use the sandwich approach to carding by sorting fibres into 'bread', 'filling' and 'seasoning'.
These fibres are all my 'bread' options. They're smooth, have a moderate staple length and there's plenty of them. These are great fibres to make the base layer of any carded fibre. Most of this is dyed alpaca fleece, but there's also some hand dyed braids and some commercial alpaca/silk fibre.
These are my 'filling' fibres. They're smaller quantities, or a bit different. There's some mohair (I think) fleece, some Merino and sparkle blends, some baby camel/silk blends and a few left overs from other projects. These will work well on top of the bread but won't be the basis of any carded fibre.
Finally, there's the fun stuff! The seasoning. The random bits and pieces to sprinkle over the top to add some zing. There's some great treasures here - mohair locks, longwool locks, sparkle and many different kinds of silk.
I loaded up all this fibre, plus my drum carder and blending board, for the fun day. My plan was to take heaps of stuff and get other people to use it so I can come home with less fluff and make room in my stash. ... Sadly, everyone else at the carding fun day had exactly this approach. So I mostly used their fibre and not my own, and also brought home much of my own fibre. In fact, I think I came home with more than what I started with. But still, I had fun!
Here's two different blends I made that day. The first is this collection of mystery wool in similar colours with some teal tussah silk (a wild species of silkworm that makes shorter, less shiny silk).
I held the 4 different colous of wool fibre in hand and pulled off staple lengths of all of them at once, making little multicoloured tufts. I then blended these on the drum carder to make a mottled brownish fibre.
Once I had a nice smooth 'bread' base of wool fibre on the drum carder it's time to go straight to some seasoning. The tussah silk was very short, but very colourful.
Once I'd added enough silk it's time to take the fibre off the drum carder. I decided to try a new technique where you use a diz (a thing with a hole in it - almost any thing will do) and pull of a long fibre snake (called roving).
Dizzing off the drum carder was honestly fussy and not fun. The drum kept rolling around and the long snake of fibre kept getting caught on the teeth, or getting eaten by the drum carder and it moved. But it did make a sweet little pile of fluff.
Drum carding is quite tiring on the arms, so after lunch I switched to using my blending board. I also challenged myself to pick some colours that I would never choose normally. Hence this radiant mess.
This is some fluro orange Merino and pink Merino plus some sari silk waste (long threads of mulberry silk thread left over from weaving saris). Blending boards use the same sandwich approach as drum carders. So I laid down my breaddy base of hi vis orange fibre.
Then lay down a bit of pink to add some interest.
Then it was time for the sari silk. It was super long so I ended up cutting it into smaller pieces. Maybe too small, but oh well. Onto the blending board they go.
Once I'd added all the fibre I used some sticks to pick up and roll the fibre into little worms called rolags.
I think I like making rolags more than I like spinning them. They can look very aesthetic and they're fun to make. But they're probably my least favourite kind of spinning preperation to spin. Oh well.
I had fun at the carding day and I'm only a little mad that I came home with more fluff than when I left.
Thoughts
Date: 4 October 2025 08:00 am (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 4 October 2025 11:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 5 October 2025 08:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12 October 2025 08:42 pm (UTC)This post is fascinating (and it reminded me that I really should knit more...)! Those colors look so pretty and I'd like to just pet the lil fibre worms. Do you have any idea what you'll be making of them yet?
(no subject)
Date: 14 October 2025 06:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24 October 2025 04:38 pm (UTC)Hi! I don't know anything about spinning and this was really interesting to read! Plus now I know a little tiny bit about it. :D
(no subject)
Date: 24 October 2025 07:46 pm (UTC)