Carding

Remember this project? Well, over the weekend I got all of the different wools carded in preparation for blending*. This is what they look like now. On the left is the Icelandic from the Spunky Eclectic Fiber Club - January fiber. In the center is the Cotswold Lambswool and Alpaca, and on the right is the green and blue finewool from Spinner's Hill. I blended the two colors of the Spinner's Hill batts a bit to make it easier to blend all three fibers together. Now I'm ready to start blending all of the different wools together into batts. I don't know for sure how many passes each batt will take through the carder, but I want a fairly well blended batt to spin from. This should be a drapy yarn with the Icelandic, Cotswold and Alpaca - the fine wools will add a little bit of bounce and some softness, without interfering with the overall drape of the finished yarn. Of course all this is theoretical. If I was smart I would sample before I did all this, but I don't want to sample - I just want to get it all blended!

*All of the fiber had been previously processed - the Icelandic and the Cotswold/Alpaca blend were both in roving forms and the finewool mix was in batts, but by running it all through the drum carder once (except the finewools, which went through twice to blend colors), I fluffed up the fibers a bit and got smaller sections to work with as I blend.