Members' Tips and Tricks
Members are invited to show off their experience and expertise by submitting "Tips and Tricks" for this page. Below are the articles submitted as of 3/5/2010:
Ball-Plying Procedure, by Elena Dent (added 2/24/2005)
Carding Directions, by Elena Dent (added 2/24/2005)
Centerpull Ball Tips, by Elena Dent (added 2/24/2005)
Clean Wool, Pre-Spinning Preparation, by Elena Dent (added 2/24/2005)
Dyeing Evenly, by Elena Dent (added 2/24/2005)
Making A Distaff, and Spinning Bast Fiber, by Elena Dent (added 2/24/2005)
Wool Scouring, by Elena Dent (added 2/24/2005)
Clean Wool, Pre-Spinning Preparation
You will find that you get all sorts of (contradictory) advice about fiber preparation. Here are a few things I've noticed:
I do not think hand carding can beat a commercial pin draft roving, but I do think it beats a commercially carded roving made from fleece I've prepared myself. The commercial carding seems to tear up the fleece and leave a lot of neps, and they put some sort of oil in the wool which seems to glue a roving together if left in. I have heard good things about Taos Mill from a friend in my Guild but have not used them yet. If it interests you I'm pretty sure someone on the Spinlist can send you their address.
Hand carding, again, much of the advice is contradictory. I do know once I get neps it's impossible to get rid of them. I load a card along the tip, then use the other card and brush that wool, making sure the teeth do not interlock and I don't whirl the wool ends around the tips to form neps. I transfer the wool from the loaded to the unloaded card, then reverse. I do this about three times, then hook the empty card's back teeth under the free ends and whip the batt off the filled card (this sounds harder than it is) and lay the batt down. I lay out a row of these end to end with ends overlapping, then lay a dowel down at a 45 degree angle and roll the whole thing up. This produces a wool "slug."
Grab the slug in the middle with your hands about a hand's width apart and separate till you feel the wool move. Do this along the slug, gradually thinning it. Pay attention to pulling apart thick areas and keeping the thinner areas stable. You're trying to turn the slug into a snake. This method works very well for making a roving and if you're working with several colors of dyed wool it makes a fun variegated roving with the colors mixed enough to be interesting without turning them into mud.
A drum carder may well be worth getting; see if you can rent one or try it at a show before you buy. Like hand carding, it is important to get rid of all the neps and crud before you try to use it because if you don't you'll just mix in the trash and make it even harder to get rid of.
Combs. I would only use those if I could take one of the all day classes from someone who really knows what they're doing. They can be very dangerous. There is definitely a knack to using them which I think can only be learned from hands on classes with someone experienced. I've tried them, and without that training you'll find you've worked very hard and spent a lot of time without really improving your wool all that much.
The flicker is pretty cheap compared to a good pair of combs, and you can get a pet rake which will do about the same thing for even less than the flicker. After messing around with carding some soft fleece and being unable to get rid of the neps I tried a cheap metal human hair comb on some raw fleece before scouring. It worked GREAT. It was slow, but it got all the vegetable matter, neps and short cuts with very little effort. I've also found I like flicking in the grease. The grease seems to hang onto the crud and make it easier to get rid of the junk, and it's easier to grab lock by lock too. And you can also combine several small pieces of locks, comb, and make that chunk of wool into a "lock."
Some people go to great lengths to keep the lock structure, and spin base to tip (or is it tip to base? I can't keep it straight) And some people will say you must NEVER wind the single onto a ball winder and ply off that. I dunno why. I will say as your spinning gets fine and smooth make very sure the ball winds evenly without jumping off as you go. If the yarn "jumps" during wind-on it will make your life hell as you try to ply, because the center will be tangled with outer layers and will rip the center out many times.