Carding and Spinning

Today I finally started carding and spinning my wool, using the spindle that I picked up from my sweetheart yesterday.

To card the wool, I'm using slicker style dog brushes. They use the same type and shape of pins that hand carders have, though I find the bristles softer than hand carders I've seen at pioneer villages in the past. It just means that I have to use a couple more strokes to card the wool.
I found these brushes at the dollar store, and I think they cost 1.50$ each. While they are smaller than the paddles on traditional carders, and I can't card as much wool at a time, I couldn't argue with the price. I priced new hand carders in my area and found them around the 40-70$ range. I'll stick with dog brushes, thanks.




          

Then, I load up one brush with 3-5 locks of wool, cut ends towards the handle. I then brush from the cut ends to the tips until the wool is pretty uniformly fluffy, and evenly distributed between the two brushes.

Next use a scooping motion with the top brush to scoop up all the wool from the other. Now all the wool is on one brush.  I roll the wool off the pins (towards the handle), to make a thick cigar type shape. Now this roll of wool, called a rolag, is ready to be spun. I'll do my best to explain that process in the upcoming posts, but it's tricky to both spin (which takes two hands) and take pictures. I found a great set of instructions here. That might be your best bet for learning to hand spin. I'm new at this myself!

Tada!! Suddenly the fleece is yarn! Thanks for the spindle honey!