Courageous Carding

My carding has become very circumscribed by convention over the last few years. Yesterday I took a baby step towards freeing my carding. With some grey alpaca as the bread I made a sandwich with scraps of merino from previous cardings, spun it, loved it and kept making more until I'd used the whole bag of scraps.


I've still got a long way to go. My next carding challenge is make every sandwich different and see what appears on the wheel

 Here's the single - with some silk too.

I soaked the single in hot soapy water then moved a plunger up and down to begin felting the single to stabilise the twist. I lost my rhythm every time the plunger stuck to the bottom of the bucket.
Then I removed the skein, pressed out the excess water, folded it in half, gently rubbed on Sunlight soap and felted the skein in a bamboo placemat NOT very much. As soon as the skein started to stick together, I reskeined the yarn, then rinsed it in cold water. It's easiest if I wind the skein off the bobbin onto the skein winder and then I use a niddy noddy for the second skeining. I found that I could get away without any more felting and reskeining.

I took out the saturated skein snapped it twice then hung it to dry. I always get quite wet during the snapping but it straightens out the yarn so well I don't mind. I hung it out sopping wet to dry without any weight.
The finished skein is soft, light and airy.

Nasty neps and nits

I'm gradually spinning up the 16+ colours but I'm having multitudinous probems with neps. Every few draws I have to stop and remove those pesky little concentrations of short fibres. From the 33g of fibre I've spun today  I've removed 3g of neps. I've also let many more go through the spinning wheel. It makes the spinning arduous instead of a pleasure.

Nasty neps

Close up of a nep

3 g of neps from 33g of fibre spun

I contacted New Zealand spinning guru Pat Old and asked for help tracking down the cause. Possibilities were:

• Over dyeing in the microwave which would make the fibres brittle and more prone to breaking. I tested the strength of the undyed and dyed fibre but they seemed identical.
• Short fibres in the undyed fibre which could form neps in the carding process. I checked the length of the fibre and they all appeared long.

By this time I was wondering if it was my carding technique. I'd done the carding with one hand - the other was out of action - so maybe I wasn't as careful as I should have been. I tried carding some undyed fibre carefully. There were no neps of short fibres before carding but after there were plenty. I looked again at the length of the fibres and discovered there were short fibres amongst the long fibres. In my determination to master handpainting roving and dyeing in the microwave I'd completely forgotted to check the fibre quality. I'd assumed Ashford's merino sliver would be ok. However this is sold for felting as well as spinning so it wasn't surprising that it had a mix of fibres of varying length.

Lovely gradations of colour

During the spinning I've let many neps into the single. There are far too many to attempt to remove. I'm just hoping they don't bite me on the bum and cause endless nits on my knitted garment. Next time I shall test the fibre using combs. If there are short fibres they will be caught on the combs.

The good news is I love the colours and effect of short rows in the knitting. The triangles are knitted with alternating balls.

Dream jacket Finished

For years I've wanted to make a handspun version of this pattern. My sister knitted one from commercial yarn and it was a showstopper. People kept stopping her to admire it.

The blue and wine yarns were spun from Corriedale from the Anna Gratton of The Little Wool Company. I

carded some purple and pink silk into the blue wool.

The thick and thin of the cuffs was some synthetic yarn I'd had for 30 years. From it I chose the other colours.

The brilliant lime green from the Anna Gratton was the first sliver I chose. I spun it worsted.


I dyed some superwash merino orange then added sari silk. The sari silk was spun together so I unspun it then cut it into 2" (5 cm) lengths that I shredded and carded into the orange.

The final yarn was superwash merino that I painted then spun and chain (Navajo) plyed.

I used several needle sizes - the bands and collar were knitted on the largest needles. The green of the body was knitted on the smallest needles because I wanted it to hug my body and the multiyarn areas were knitted on slightly larger needles because I wanted more stretch there.

Spinning angora

I spun a worsted style yarn from some of my first blend of 30:20 merino:angora and was thrilled with the result. After I'd washed the yarn it became fluffier. Here is a knitted sample. I think this blend works well. The yarn has a lovely angora halo and the merino gives it bounce. One idea is to make a beautiful bunny hat with ears for my 6 month old granddaughter.
For the second batch of carding, I used pink merino sliver and angora in a ratio of 4:1. This time I handcarded the angora.

 then made a sandwich with the merino on the outside and angora as the filling.

I elongated the sandwich as I put it through the wild carder

I separated the batt into two lengthwise then made each smaller batt into a pile of 4 pieces. I took a section from one batt and elongated it then put it through the carder. Then one from the second pile and so on alternating the pieces.

 Here are the exquisite balls of fluff.

Angora bunny

angora fleece

Last week I was given 2 shopping bags of white angora bunny. I tipped one onto the table and was surprised to find mice had been nesting in the bag. Fortunately the mice were gone but their droppings and additions to the nest like shredded paper remained. More importantly they don't seem to have chewed the fibre.

I sorted the bunny into 4 piles, one was rubbish, the second was really short pieces, the third pieces about 1 inch long and the fourth and largest pile was fleece about 3 inches long.

For my first experimental blend I decided to use 30g superwash merino to 20g of the 3" bunny. As I'd heard that angora is easier to handle if it has been rested in the freezer I put it into a plastic bag and "froze" it. I divided the 50g of merino and bunny into 4 equal lots and carded 1 lot at a time using an Ashford Wild Carder. I made sandwiches of merino with bunny as the filling. After about 3 or 4 cardings the fibres looked evenly blended. There were a few specks of dirt in the angora but I figure they will come out when the spun blend is washed. Next time I would put the merino through the carder on its own first to encourage the fibres to spread out easily.