Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Carding Done

Since I needed to clear off the dining room table for the holidays, I had to finish the drum carding of my blue face leicester and bamboo blend.  All total there was 2.5 pounds of fiber.  The blend was 60% wool and 40% bamboo.

The project is to spin the yarn into a sport weight and then dye the yarn and finally knit the Traveling Woman sweater.  It is an ambitious project.

I found that the bamboo was very airy and needed to be sandwiched into the wool.  I had to make 3 passes through the carder for a well blended mix.  The bamboo had to be inserted during passes 2 and 3 to finally get it all in there.
The Duncan carder that I got is fabulous.  The motor runs smoothly and carding was so easy that I was able to keep feeding the fiber without worrying about cranking the drum.

As I previously posted, I had quite a few bundles of fiber measured out and the final product looks like this.
Nice fluffy and soft giant cigars.  Perfect for woolen spinning.  Now I need to choose the wheel and get it prepared.

No comments:

Post a Comment