Hand Carding: Keeping Colors Clear and Fiber Blends

Spent Mother's Day with a group of really nice and talented people who chose to take my "Wheel Plying" workshop (1/2 day mini-version) at the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival. What a difference a year makes! Last year the very same festival's grounds were a virtual river. This year the weather was as glorious as could be. Lovely!

Dave, who hired me to teach at the fest, mentioned I'd be welcomed back to do the same next year. A question: For you folks who are thinking of attending the NH festival next year, what would you like to see me teach? Remember, it's only a mini-class they want. I'm open to suggestions.

After packing up from the workshop, Chris cheerily said, "Let's go out to dinner." Next came the discussion on just where we wanted to go. Ended up in Keene, NH at a Mexican restaurant we had never been to. I'm no drinker, but I do admit to an occasional hankering for a frozen Margarita, with lots of salt on the rim, please...especially when coupled with a Nachos Supreme.

The drink arrived and I clearly remember telling Chris, "Gee, this is good but it's really strong on the alcohol." After that, I have no idea what I said. All I know is that I've not been that snockered since our days at university. One drink. That's all I had to make the room spin out of control. I nearly couldn't make it to the car and I'll spare you what came after. I'm guessing, though it's a moot point and we'll never know for sure...that the waiter got sidetracked talking to a pretty co-worker as he was pouring the Tequila. I'm guessing I had the equivalent of three drinks at once. No Margaritas for me anytime soon....You should have seen Alexander's face when he saw me drunk-as-a-skunk! He asked if I wanted one of the shortbread cookies that he baked for me for Mother's Day and I nearly turned green at the thought of it.

Here's how I spent a goodly portion of yesterday. What you're looking at are Alexander's old socks, turned inside out, filled with something and tied with yarn. Into the washer these odd-looking packages went, sharing the water with some clothing that needed cleaning, as well. Then, they're popped into the dryer for a regular cycle.

Untie the socks and you get felted cat balls! Anyone who's been avidly reading this blog knows how I use these. If you've forgotten how to make them, go to the past post, Storing Takli-Spun Singles For Plying.

Summer is around the corner and that means my schedule for teaching spinning classes is heating up. Next week will be my 9th consecutive "Learn to Spin" at Harrisville Designs. Instead of a detailed technique post next week, I'll ask the participants of that class if I can take a few pics of them, so you can see what goes on in a three-day, intensive beginning spinning class. So please look for a post sometime during the following weekend, rather than mid-week as is my usual practice.

Have you had enough of hand carding? I hope not because what follows are a lot of tips that can make your hand carding loads of fun. What could be better than carding together more than one color, keeping those colors clear and separated? How 'bout blends of different fibers that allow you to spin a unique yarn of your own creation?! Onward for a ripping good time...

But first, I suggest you go back to the last two weeks' posts, Hand Carding Wool Locks For Spinning, and My Dad & more on hand carding, to review the steps of my carding methods. Look for the bare-bones-basic technique as well as info on parallel carding, swooping and seesawing.

The pic above shows the long Coopworth lamb's wool, one-year's growth. Do please go to the past post Scouring Fleece To Keep Lock Formation, for more on the fleece and where it was purchased. If you're interested in how the wool was rainbow dyed, head for Clear & Brilliant Rainbow Dyeing.

Before showing you how to keep color clear in a hand carded prep, I wanted to demonstrate how awkward it is to card anything more than 3-4 inches. You're looking at locks that are 7 inches or more.

For one thing, your arms have to extend really far in the opposite direction from each other in order to clear each pass on the carder. If you don't completely clear the pass in parallel carding, you'll be apt to fold fibers back on themselves and cause a tangled mess.

Look at how these long fibers flip back over the wooden back of the carders! Ick! Static electricity contributes to the dilemma.

So what's a spinner to do if he/she chooses to hand card these locks? Cut them. In the above case, I cut the locks right in half. If the tips were brittle and breaking anyways, I would have cut them off. The bottom line is: You can cut fibers wherever you damn well please and don't worry if folks tell you that you can't.

If cutting into the locks makes you queasy, consider that the locks had to be shorn off the sheep in order to be in your hands in the first place.

Just-cut locks lined up on my knee.

Now for some neat-o color stuff. In the above pic, I tried to keep the greenish-blue locks on one side and the orangish-red locks on the other side. 'course this fleece was rainbow dyed, so there are bits of other colors on all the locks...as long as the other colors are in small amounts, you can treat this as two, separate colors that are going on your hand cards.

Just because I used only two colors doesn't mean you can't use more. Try it as you follow the directs.

You're looking at parallel carding above. The fiber will get distributed on both hand cards after parallel carding. What you don't see, but what I did do is SWOOP both up and down after parallel carding. It is this swooping that keeps each color with its own, rather than homogenizing the colors into a third color.

After a few sets of parallel carding, swooping up and swooping down, I have a batt of wool with green on one side and red on the other.

Rolling the rolag towards my stomach, making use of the bend of the teeth to release the fiber for rolling.

A pretty, little green and red rolag!

OR, if you roll across the card you get a cigar.

More cigar-making rolling.

The cigar in all its glory. Note that you do not get that clear, separation of color with the cigar, as you did with the rolag.

The cigar predrafted, if you like. This step isn't necessary unless YOU want to do it.

Okee-doe-kee. On to hand carding for blending various types of fibers. Let me refer you to the past posts, Spinning Hand Carded Qiviut; Some Bling: Naturally Dyed Icicle, and Spindle Spun & Plied Silk Latte and Qiviut For Knitted Lace, for what I'm using in the following pics.

I used to be a By-Gosh-And-By-Golly blender of fibers on hand cards. In other words, I didn't weigh any of the fibers prior to carding...I just gave it my best shot. I actually carded several years in that fashion. Generally I eyed the fibers pretty well. Sometimes I was dead wrong.

Consider this scenario: You card two (or more) fibers to blend them for spinning a yarn that'll be used for knitting a sweater. Let's say the fibers are wool and silk. You're pretty good at getting the correct proportions of the fibers that you've decided upon in the first place, but sometimes you're way off target. Areas of the sweater turn out much shinier from the excess of silk you loaded during some of the carding. You're disappointed because you intended the sweater to be homogenously blended with both fibers throughout.

Enter the digital scale...a spinner's best friend. My scale is sold as a jewelry scale, but there are all types available these days.

Those who know me well know that my math skills are lousy. The interesting thing is, I use math all the time in my dyeing and spinning. One thing that helps immensely is to deal in grams rather than ounces. There's something about multiples of ten that make life ever so much easier.

I knew I wanted a 3/4 Silk Latte to 1/4 qiviut blend. I also wanted to be sure that I didn't end up with an overload of the total amount of fibers on my carders. With my scale set to grams, I weighed the Silk Latte to be .3 grams, as shown in the pic above.

Next, I added qiviut to the Silk Latte, until the scale read .4 grams. This made for .1 gram of qiviut for the blend.

In order to card the two fibers together, I opted to use the "sandwich" method. I have no idea who came up with this brilliant method to make carding various fibers easier (especially when one or more of the fibers are silky or slippery), but I am indebted to that spinner(s).

First you lay down the bread...the non-silky fiber or the easiest fiber to card alone. Often this is wool, but in my case presently, it's the qiviut.

Some parallel carding to distribute the fiber on both carders.

After parallel carding, we're left with bread on both carders.

Time to lay on the peanut butter filling...oh wait, it's the Silk Latte.

Parallel carding.

Both the qiviut and the Silk Latte in an early stage of blending.

Swooping up.

Swooping down. Repeat parallel carding, swooping up and swooping down as many times as you want, depending on how homogenous of a blend you're looking for.

The pic above shows the fiber after seesawing.

The rolling of the blended qiviut and Silk Latte into a rolag.

A few further thoughts: One can card fibers of various lengths together into a hand carded blend. However, one should beware of killing the baby bird at the wheel. For more on that, see the past post, Please Don't Kill The Baby Bird. If you do hold the fiber with a death grip AND the various lengths of fibers are quite diverse from each other, you will risk spinning out the longest fibers and be left holding the shortest in your hand. All your careful carding will have been for naught. If you'd prefer that the long fibers described in this example given were shorter, consider cutting them to suit you...of course!

I've not taken the above blending exercise to another set of steps I often do, especially if I'm carding for a big-ish project and if I want the blend to be on the more homogenous side. But that will have to wait for a future post.

A big, special THANK YOU to our guest photographer once again, Leslie! She took the carding pics that featured the rainbow dyed Coopworth. Chris, my husband of many talents, took the blending-of-more-than-one-fiber photos. Hip hip hurrah to them both!

Just a second reminder: Next post won't be until after my class at Harrisville Designs...perhaps Saturday, May 26th or so. Hope I'll see some of you there!!