I'm going to show you how I like to get my wool fleece ready for spinning into yarn using a hand carder (or a pet brush) and drum carder.
This is my preferred method for processing wool fleece for spinning, using a hand carder (or pet brush) and a drum carder. This technique results in a semi-worsted preparation, which works great for various animal fibres like sheep's wool, alpaca and mohair, as long as the staples (the individual fibres) aren’t too long.
The fleece I’m using here is Shetland x Teeswater British wool, which I previously scoured and hand-dyed using onion skins both demonstrated in earlier videos which I have linked to at the bottom of this post. This fleece has a medium staple length, which makes it perfect for this method.
The wool came out slightly matted from the dyeing process, so I started by gently separating the locks from the fleece. The key here is to be delicate and not tear the wool fibres.
Using a hand carder to flick the locks
Next, it’s time to use the hand carder to flick the locks (though a pet brush works wonders in a pinch). Gently tease the wool over the edge of the carder to separate out the fibre, almost like combing tangled hair. Don’t drag the fleece – keep the movement gentle to align the staples and remove any short, broken pieces. We’re just removing the tips and weak points that might break when put through the drum carder.
Don't throw the bits on the brush away, though! If you like a neppy texture, those broken bits can be kept in for a lovely effect, but in this case, I’m aiming for smooth and parallel fibres. This is still nice, soft fibre, so I'll save them to use as tweedy flecks blended in a separate, more textured project.
I’m left with beautifully strong, aligned fibres, that are ready to be processed with the drum carder, which will be used to get the flicked locks ready for spinning.
Using the drum carder for a semi-worsted preparation
If I were going for a more woollen-spun preparation, I would start by feeding the fleece through the front tray of the drum carder, which would feed the fibre under the small drum and up through between the two. But to prepare this fleece, I’m going for a sort of semi-worsted prep, aiming for a smoother yarn with longer fibres. Traditonally, this would be done using a wool comb, but I don't have wool combs and the drum carder produces a wider fibre preparation to spin from that I really really like.
So, what I like to do is hold my fleece parallel with all the locks facing the same way – I haven't kept the tips and butts of the fibre in the same direction, but at least the fibres are all parallel – and, taking small amounts at a time, feed them onto the top of the big drum. I simply continue to add fleece building up the layers until I basically cannot add any more.
Once the large drum is reasonably full. I take the picker and run it underneath the fibre to lift it off without breaking it. Run it between the teeth of the drum carder to loosen any stubborn bits of fleece that are getting stuck and there you have your first batt of fibre.
A second round of processing
At this point, you can gently roll it up and it will keep together whilst you prepare the other bats to spin from, however, I chose to card this batch for a second time to help break up any clumped areas. If I had a hand-dyed fibre with a lot more colours going on or if I had chosen to combine different fibres, a second (or even third) pass through the drum carder helps to blend the fibres or colours together more consistently.
Beautiful British wool batts, ready for spinning
And there we go - one nice shiny batt, ready for spinning. You can either spin it straight from the end and just draft it out for long draw spinning, or you can do as I prefer and unroll it, peel it off in strips and spin from one end down along the length of the batt to maintain that lovely parallel alignment of all the fibres.
If you’re curious about how I’ll be spinning this beautiful Shetland x Teeswater British wool fleece, stay tuned for the next post in this series.
Previous posts in this series:
How to dye wool fleece with onion skins
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Deep Relaxation Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
