I made a promise to make a post about spinning yarn and it has been on my mind ever since. Now I'm spinning again so I thought I would make that post, but it won't be just one post. There's to much to tell to put it in one post. I had my daughter to help me make a few short videos and I tried to find a way to upload them here on steemit. I couldn't find any so I just turned into a youtuber as well, but I'll probably never do any videos besides the one I'll need to make for this series. I thought it would be nice to go through the whole process starting with washing and carding the wool. I can at least give you a short explanation how I do it.
(picture from pinterest)
Wool is a nice material that can be used to do a lot of different things with. I use a variety of technics, depending on what type of wool I have. Wool with shorter fibers are better to felt with than wool with really long fibers. With the exception of merino wool. It's soft and dense enough to do both with. I buy merino for the variety of colors and use it whenever I want to add some color. I haven't used a lot of different types of wool, but enough to know what I'm looking for. Long fibers that are soft I spin yarn from and wool that are shorter, softer and more dense I save for felting. There's only one kind I don't use to anything but beard or hair for my santas, that's locks that reminds me of very thick hair. I did try to card them, they only ended up feeling like a wig or a very wild looking toupee.
I wash raw wool by hand, using dish soap. Be careful not to agitate the wool while washing it. I only push it down to soak and then I just push it very lightly around a couple of times so that it moves around just a bit. I use a couple of big wash tubs, first I soak the wool in really hot water and let it sit for at least ten minutes. I drain some of the dirty water out of it and soak it in hot water with a very small amount of soap, I only use a few drops. I try not to wash out all of the lanolin. Then I soak it in clean water at least two sometimes three times. Always fill the water in your tub or whatever you use before you put in the wool. One thing to remember is to try and keep the water about the same temperatures through all of the washing. I lay it out to dry using (don't laugh, low budget) old curtains. Lace curtains.
I have a couple of drying racks and with a curtain on it works as a screen. I let it drain in a plastic bin that have holes in it, I put a curtain over it to keep the wool from passing through any of the holes. I move the wool from the tub by carefully picking it up with my hands and into a bucket, if I don't have it in a washing bag that I made. It's easier to move the wet wool to the drying rack if it's already in a curtain. Sometimes I just use what is around, on the picture I used an old enamel sink.
I don't do anything to get rid of small debris or felted locks before washing. I usually get it all out when I start carding it.
When the wool has dried it's time to do some carding. I love my hand carders, I use them a lot. Carding with hand carders isn't all that easy just to begin with, it takes a certain technic to do it and I watched a really great video when I started to learn. I won't make a video to try and explain, I'll just put the video I watched at the end of this post instead.
This is the wool I'm spinning from right now. It's a lambs wool and I haven't washed it. You can see the darker tips on the wool, all the lambs wool I got has a tip in a different color. It's a really nice wool to spin.
This is how it looks when carded. I wanted to show that it looks a bit different and you can see how it's kind of fluffy. My plan is to show you how to spin and then how to ply the two singles into a yarn using the yarn I'm already spinning.
Here comes the video on how to use hand carders. I also use a drum carder, but I still do the hand carding before using the drum carder to get a better result.
I hope you enjoyed watching this and that you will stay tuned for the next part!
Until next time, be well.
//S
