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.