Hook ‘n Spin – A true fiber addict

I did not post about the problems I had with the drum carder. My Howard Brush – David tri-carder started out great.  But alas, after about 3 or 4 batts, it was all out of whack.  The drum had moved to the back of the box and the tines were rubbing on the box, scratching it and bending the tines.  Even the brass strip where you insert the stick to start removing the batt rubbed against the box and came off.

I contacted the manufacturer and they did not want me to send it back, and claimed that it wasn’t their fault – EVERYTHING – goes out perfect and double checked.  Right. She said to try to fix it myself and recontact them if I had further problems.

So I had some friends who own drum carders look at it, and one said that the box was not square.  She made some suggestions.  I also had another offer from an engineer friend to look at it.

I took it apart, re-aligned it all, tightened all screws (that supposedly were shipped in a condition that no adjustments were needed), and got the thing working again. I think that was the problem, they just did not tighten all the screws enough and the entire thing kept shifting with every crank of the handle.  Me, being a newbie to drum carding did not know enough to stop and tighten.

I carded one sheep’s worth of fleece after that.  My fix held.

I’m still working on local Shetland from the neighborhood.  The fleece is very soft, but the VM had to be picked out as I flicked and carded and really made a mess everywhere.  What I got was a large bag of 4 pounds of fluffy natural white Shetland batts.  I also spun enough of the beautiful Babydoll I traded Windy Oak Farms for, and the beautiful caramel colored Alpaca I picked up at a local festival mixed together to start socks for my son-in-law.

I also had some Shetland already dyed from backyard goldenrod which came out a pale moss green, and I had a small bit of Kool-aid dye, cherry.  This, I carded together into batts, and have now started to spin.  I love the paleness of the yarn.  Take a look:

The yarn is spinning up so light and soft!  The draft is easing right out of the batt segment.  I’m tearing off long portions from the end of the batts, alternating from the solid green on the left side of the picture, to the mixed batt.  The spool took almost two batts and there are 2 and a half batts left.  I am going to get significant yardage out of this.  I might get a pair of mittens as well as the pair of socks I was aiming for.

After reading a post by everybody’s fiber friend and fiber educator extraordinaire, Abby, about cleaning drums and re-carding cast-off wool from previous cardings, I tried drum-carding some blue and white Shetland that I had left over from my dog brush carding days.  I still had a bunch of discard wool, but I did get a small batt of very pretty and quite soft spinnable wool:

Woo hoo!

On the hook:

Current crochet project is a pink thread shawl of my own design.  I went to an auction and picked up some really great spools of cotton slub for a very, very low price. This shawl is for my school secret pal.

On the needle:

SIL’s socks, and a pair of slippers for a friend.  I found some left over Jiffy in red from an afghan I made a year ago and thought it would make good washable slippers in these frigid times.

I also have a shell that I am knitting for myself that is being shelved for other projects because it is in MicroSpun and I probably won’t wear it until spring.

I also finished spinning an amount of black mystery wool from Zielingers which I think she said just might be a Merino/Ramboullet mix.  I knitted DH one mitten and ran out of yarn.  So I had to spin and ply enough to make the other.  Now if I can only remember what size needles I used for the first one!