Pulling a roving thru a diz from a drum carded batt

Pulling a roving thru a diz from a drum carded batt can give a great preparation to spin. Here is the roving started. I use one of those plastic marketing credit cards with a hole poked in it as a cheap diz.

This shot shows the diz threaded with the beginning of the batt.












I pull the fiber away from the drum, the diz usually comes with it.











I then push the diz back towards the drum while maintaining tension on the roving.









Repeat all the way across the drum. Sometimes some fiber is left on the drum - it can be lifted up with a utensil to be incorporated into the roving

More polworth carded

I demo'd for about 4 hours yesterday at the Mesa SW Museum with some members of my Mesa Guild - The Telarana Weavers and Spinners.

I was asked to bring my drum carder and show how wool was/is processed. I brought along some more of the never ending grey polworth and between the children that stopped by and I, we managed to card up about 16 ounces.







Ruth and I experimented with dizing from the drum carder and here is the roving we produced from that.






I have already started spinning this on my Lendrum. It wants to be a bulky lofty yarn and I am having to concentrate to keep from spinning it finer.

This roving turned out so well, that I re-carded all the batts and pulled rovings from them all.

Superfine Merino

Here is the remainder of the superfine Merino that I washed up during Sunday's effort. It did not wash up as clean as the first batch - but this batch was a much larger amount.

The first batch I washed was just a handful in the sink - this was outside in the wash tub.

I will have to comb it in order to spin it, as the drum carder and hand cards just nep it up.



The staple length on this is very short - less than 2 inches - that makes it hard to work with for me.

Sunday craze

For some reason my brain was racing with projects this morning.

I decided to wash up the rest of the superfine merino that Alicia gave me for the longest thread competition. I am going to comb the rest of it and practice again to see if I can get my yardage up. I have missed the deadline for this year, but the practice couldn't hurt.

While that was sitting in the wash water, I got out 4 ounces of tussah silk to dye. I hand painted it in dark green, burgundy and violet. I laid it out on a black plastic trash bag, then folded it up when I was done. I am going to spin this very fine to ply with that charcoal polworth that I have been spinning.

Then, since I already had the dyes out, I put about 4 ounces of superwash merino in a dye bath and just poured those same three colors in blotches into the wool. I made sure that it penetrated all the way thru and then covered it with another trash bag. I set those on top of a dog crate in the back yard in the full sun.


Then, while those were cooking, I carded up about 6-7 ounces of the light grey polworth. I thought I might do another 3 ply with the charcoal polworth and the silk. I started spinning the light grey and when I put it with the charcoal - I didn't like the tweediness. Oh well, I will finish spinning it - got to be something I can do with 6 ounces of grey polworth spun very fine.

I had to put the wool back in the sun for another day - the dye bath did not exhaust and some of the wool was still white in spots. I poured some more violet into it and set it back in the sun.

I need to buy some more vinegar - I used the last of it today.

The silk also has some undyed places in the center of the roving - I am not sure if I will try to re-dye it to hit those spots or just spin it the way it is.

Pictures to come.....

Purples and greens

I decided to work on the purple and green cotswold - blending it 50/50 with the white romney and this is how it turned out. This is only 6 ounces of the 32 that I have planned for this batch. I will work on the remaining batts over the next week or so - trying to get a few in each morning.

I think I will spin this up bulky, alternating colors in the single and then letting the plying determine how striped the final yarn will be. The anticipation of not knowing really how a yarn will finally look until the plying is done and the yarn is skeined up is part of the design process for me.

Decisions, Decisions...

I am going to my Queen Creek guild meeting this morning - well it's more like a buncha fiber nuts hanging out together than a guild - but we call it that anyway...

I am bringing my drum carder today, I have a number of projects running thru my head that I want to get started on.

I am taking both of these as I can't decide which one I want to work on.

This is some gorgeous cotswold, dyed in the lock by Laurie at Frene Creek Farms, that I need to do the prep work on. I like to card this up in 1/2 ounce batts to prepare it for blending in with something else.







This is over a pound of 1/2 ounce each prepared cotswold batts that are ready to be blended. I have decided to add in some of that white romney - about half and half.

These little batts all go together with the greens and purples - most of these batts have some of each color in them. A few batts are all one color.

I think I will have about 2 pounds of fiber in this colorway when it's done. This calls out to be spun fairly bulky and then knit into a jacket or big sweater.

another drum carding weekend

I carded this up as a request for M, but I'm not sure it's what she wants. I love the colors, but it might be two busy.

Polworth combed top

I don't know that I would actually call this top - at least it doesn't look like commercial top. Each one of these little nests is pulled from my combs after a couple of passes.

Each one weighs a little over 0.1 ounces - about 8 or 9 of them to the ounce.

As you can imagine, this is very labor intensive. I found that cutting the dry sunbrowned tips off, give a much nicer fiber to spin. It also makes the resulting yarn a much nicer dark charcoal than leaving the tips on did.

spinning fire - finished

Here are all 16 of the batts for this group. I am really liking the way rolling the batts up this way shows off the colors. They take up a lot of room this way - this is only one pound of fiber, but it completely fills a large plastic zip around comforter bag.

I sure hope Ellen sends me pictures of the finished yarn she makes from this.

I've started the next group - it's going to be greens and this same yellow.

Spinning fire - spoken for

My friend Ellen has called dibs on this combo. She's offered me anything but her first born child - I'd take him if she did - sweet boy that he is.

I have to finish carding this up - so that it's ready by the next guild meeting.

I'm thinking about what to do next - some more greens I think...

Spinning Fire

I like this color combo. It's yellow & red cotswold, orange wool from an ebay purchase and some of the white romney that I like so much. There's a little flash in there too.


Rolling the batts up like this takes up more room than the cinnamon bun way, but it really shows off the color more.

They are harder to store this way, more care has to be taken when moving them.


This is 6 ounces of a one pound batch that I am working on. I may put it up for trade on Friday on spindlers or take the leap and actually put it on ebay to see what the market thinks of my work.

Sending things into the world.

This is going off into the world as a present to someone. It's light grey polworth with some dyed merino and a little glitz thrown in.

Trading batts

I posted on Spindlers that I would be willing to trade spinning batts for circular knitting needles and a woman asked for these colors.

I carded them up without any glitz cause she asked for none, but I think this combo cries out for a little sparkle. This is purple and red cotswold with white romney. 1/3 each .

I am hoping that I get a picture of the spun yarn.

Who needs an electric carder...

...when you have Maegan to help?

This is my practically 9 year old niece. She comes over almost every weekend and one of her favorite things to do is help me with my fiber stuff.

She is learning to spin and has felted soaps.

One of the things that Maegan does best is work the drum carder. She is very careful and turns at exactly the right speed for the fiber we are working on.

She wants to learn how to pick the fiber in prep for carding, but I have to have some control over my prep batts.

When she is drum carding batts from the dreck fiber, she gets to do it all. Pick, turn the drum and lift the batt off.

yellow cotswold curls

I've started the prep batts for the yellow cotswold. I think this is going into some batts with orange and red cotswold and the white romney.

I think I will go for keeping the colors separated in stripes in the batts with these ones just to see how that comes out.

The aqua cotswold blended up

Here is 12 ounces of gorgeous aqua cotswold and white romney with a little green firestar and a whisper of silk. I like the way this came out.

Aqua Cotswold blending

The far left is the aqua cotswold locks carded alone and the batt on the right is the blend with white romney, green firestar and a little bit of neutral silk.









Here is 6 ounces blended up, 6 more to go for this batch.

Green cotswold

14 ounces of cotswold prep batts. I'm not sure what I will blend with this, but they sure are pretty all laid out like this.

I am thinking about blending with some grey lincoln - DeVia wants a vest and I'd like to have 16 ounces or more to make sure that I don't run out.

The grey lincoln would give this more loft as the cotswold has hardly any crimp. The white romney has a fairly long staple and I could use it too. I think DeVia prefers a darker overall look - so will probably go with the lincoln.

I could use the light grey polworth - the charcoal polworth is too short of a staple to blend with cotswold.

prep work

I carded a lot this weekend - but mostly just prep work. I like to card each of the fibers I am blending into 1/2 ounce batts before putting the colors/fibers together.

This weekend was a lot of that type prep. I have an idea about a set of greens that I would like to card up, perhaps to make DeVia that vest she has been hinting about. I have 3 different groups of green cotswold that would spin up very nicely at a worsted or bulky weight. Similar to the yarn I spun for Belinda's vest (that I never finished).

I caved this weekend and frogged Maegan's shrug. Her mom knit up a very cute one in another skein of my yarn. Jessica now wants one out of the salvaged yarn. I have it drying to get the kinks out of it. I may cast on for that this evening.

Juanita snagged two more skeins of yarn tonight - one for a shrug for Sarah and one for herself. The one for herself was a single and I ended up plying it back on it's self so that she could work with it a little easier.....

The next color blending project

Here is the first color selection for the next set of batts. These are some dyed cotswold locks that I purchased from Frene Creek. Laurie is great with color.
I'm not sure what I am going to blend with this, but I like the orangey results of this so far.


I start out by carding the locks into 1/2 ounce batts.
I like this color combination - the colors are separated enough to give a variety, but not blended into one homogenous color.







I think I will use the white Romney with this and find a deep red to blend with it.