After years of skirting, dyeing, carding and hackling, I'm blending up my wool I hand-dyed with onion, woad and rhubarb, with my precious hoard of processed flax tow. I started working on and planning this spinning project in 2020, and it's so close to becoming real handspun yarn!

How to blend wool and flax tow fibres on a drum carder for a handspinning project

One of the biggest benefits of blending your own fibres for spinning by hand, whether on a drum carder or a similar piece of equipment, is the freedom to combine fibre types that wouldn’t typically work together in commercial yarn production. I've been working on this spinning project for a while and sharing my progress along the way, so I thought I'd walk you through how to blend wool and flax tow to create beautiful, characterful fibre batts ready for handspinning.

The craft project so far

As I've mentioned, this blending is part of a larger handspun yarn project I've been working on since 2020, using locally sourced, plant-dyed 100% British wool fibre and flax tow. If you’ve followed my previous blogs and YouTube videos, you'll know I’ve already shared various stages of this craft project, from scouring and cleaning the British wool fleece, dyeing some of it with onion skins, and preparing the flax. Now, it’s time to bring everything together on my drum carder, which I got from Wingham Wool Work, and I'm excited to see how it turns out.

The fibres I am working with for spinning

I’ll ultimately be using these fibres for a weaving project, which means I'll be creating two different handspun yarns, one for the warp and one for the weft. I've split the fibres in two, so right now, I’m blending fibres for just one of those yarns.

For this blend, I’m using:

• 100% British wool fleece from Fernhill Farm (20 miles from me); a combination of Shetland x Teeswater and Shetland x Romney. I’ve got two different batches for this particular yarn, one hand-dyed with onion skins, and the other with woad leaves, (the other yarn will use a little of the onion skin batch and one I dyed using rhubarb root)
  
  

• Flax tow from Flaxland (40ish miles from me), from my visit in 2017. These are the shorter, coarser waste fibres left over after processing the longer flax fibres. I've split the amount I have in half so will be using one half for this handspun yarn and the other half for the other.

In total, the blend will be roughly 73% British wool and 27% flax tow

I suppose the first question you might ask is 'why am I blending wool and flax fibres for spinning?' The two fibres are very different, but by blending them I think I can create a beautiful handspun yarn that's super interesting.

The idea is to combine the bounce and warmth of wool with the shine, strength and breathability of flax. Wool is naturally elastic and lofty; flax is strong but not stretchy. Blending them will give me a handspun yarn with the best of both: a soft, warm base with the occasional glossy streak and slubby texture from the flax.

The wool fleece I have is particularly special. It’s all super high-quality fibre, locally grown at Fernhill Farm here in the South West of England. Some of the flax tow I’m working with is lovely and soft, but there are coarser, hairier bits too. By blending in a higher proportion of wool, I’m hoping to balance the texture, capture the softness of the wool and create a handspun yarn that’s really interesting and full of character - exactly the kind of craft project I love.

How to blend fibres on a drum carder

Step 1: Tearing and layering the fibre

To start, I tear up the wool batts into smaller pieces. This makes the fibre easier to control and less likely to get caught in the carder. I always take it slow to avoid any large clumps, especially important when mixing in the flax tow.

Instead of feeding the fibres through the front (as you would for a true carded prep), I lay them on top of the drum. This method helps me approximate a semi-worsted fibre preparation, which is ideal for creating a smoother, finer yarn.

A true carded prep involves feeding the fibres through the front of the carder which jumbles them up, trapping in a lot of air and making for a very bouncy and springy yarn. But that’s is not what I am after here. I want the fibres to lie as parallel as possible, aiming for a sort of semi-worsted yarn when I start spinning. 

That said, I’m not aiming for complete precision and even distribution, especially as I will be making multiple batts. Of course, I’d like them to be similar, but for this first round, I just laid the fibre down in proportions that felt about right.

Step 2: Carding for a (sort of) semi-worsted prep

While this isn’t a true worsted prep (which would require a wool comb rather than a wool carder), I try to keep fibres aligned during carding to prepare for semi-worsted spinning. I don't need a super springy yarn, but I would like a smooth, manageable batt.

The flax tow is quite inconsistent, with both aligned bits and neppy clumps, so I gently pull it apart before carding to help distribute it more evenly through the wool. Having said that, part of the point of this handspun yarn is to kind of embrace the irregularities and texture. This is fibre that isn’t considered to be super useful commercially, but we are going to create a beautiful handspun yarn with it just the same.

Step 3: First pass on the drum carder

I card the fibres slowly, being careful not to overload the drum, especially as I lose a little bit of flax fibre in the front drum. Once the carder is relatively full, I remove the batt. After the first full round of carding, I also scoop up any loose fluff that has built up on the front drum to re-incorporate later.

By the end of round one, I had six batts of varying sizes. Usually, I’d roll them into sausages straight off the drum carder, but I'm going to repeat this process. I noticed I’d been using wool a bit faster than flax, so the final few batts were a bit heavier on the flax. To combat this, I'm going to shred and reblend. 

Reblending for a more consistent spinning fibre 

To create a more consistent blend, I card the fibres for a second round. Stripping the batts is the fun part! I tear the first batch into strips and jumble them together to redistribute the flax fibres a bit more uniformly. This also helps blend the fibres more thoroughly and means it’s not quite as clumpy.

When shredding the batts, I try to maintain the parallel fibre alignment, tearing off strips and pulling off the lumps. Once all the batts are torn up, it's time for one final tumble to mix them all up, and we’re ready for round two.

The good thing about the second round of carding is that I don’t need to think about distributing the fibres, I can just grab from the pile of spinning fibre and pop them straight onto the carder.  

Blended fibre ready for spinning (eventually!)

These final batts are now rolled into nice, tight sausages straight off the drum carder, ready for spinning. My spinning wheel is currently occupied with another spinning project, so this yarn will have to wait its turn, but I'm already looking forward to working with it. 

Once my wheel is available for spinning, these batts will be processed further, by which I mean I'll split them up in the way I like to before I start spinning - something I will probably show in a future blog later down the line. 

Because the wool has been carded a couple of times already before being blended with the flax tow, the fibre prep is going to be really nice and smooth. The finished yarn should feature these lovely streaks of flax running through with the occasional slubby bit. I’m really excited about creating another handspun yarn that’s full of character, showing off some of the natural texture of the different fibres.

That’s what I love most about handspinning. Not only does it give me freedom to blend perhaps fibres that might not be an obvious match, but working by hand means you can be slower, more deliberate and with intention. I can control the yarn and make it exactly as I want it, and I'm aiming to spin this one as fine as I can. 

Follow this craft project from the start

As I mentioned at the start, if you'd like to catch up with the rest of this craft project, from washing the fleece to dyeing with plants and preparing flax, you can watch the full process on my YouTube playlist.

And if you want to see how the spinning turns out, please do subscribe to my channel, and you’ll be notified when the next video in the series is released.

I’ll catch you next time with more progress on this spinning/weaving project!

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