Traditionalists should probably stop reading now!

Lets begin with this simple fact; carding is tedious and slow! Especially when your carding brushes are actually cat slicker brushes from Wilkinson! (Yes I know I haven't yet got around to  explaining the best way I found to brush with something that is actually to small to do the job properly.)

Mr and Mrs Prehistoric couldn't pop out to pets at home to get slicker brushes or go online so what did THEY do?

As an archaeologist I fid this question intriguing. Maybe they used teasels? (Memo to self: it's the right time of year so go see if there any about in the park that you can pick to experiment.)

Maybe however they just span straight from the fleece with minimal preparation.

So this is what I decided to try.

Technique:

My fleece was only washed in plain water so I'll be 'spinning in the grease' but Mr and Mrs Prehistoric's soap supply was unlikely to include anything more efficient than soapwort leaves which I wouldn't recognise if I stepped on them.

Another memo to self: Find out if I can set this blogger dictionary to flipping English so it stops telling me to spell things the American way!!

Where as I?

Oh yes.

What I have tried is this; I pulled bits away from the fleece in areas where the bats are not terribly distinct. Pulling bits out stretches the fibres into more or less the same alignment and then I made a small rolag held in my left fist.

Then I started to spin. As I came to the end of each rolag I made another and another.

Results:

well, the yarn can best be described as uneven, but that may be partly due to the fact that I suck at making rolags and am not that good at spinning yet. Some of it, however, is probably due to the blobbiness of the unbrushed fleece.

Photo section:

This shows a skein made from the fleece wool. That wool was carded as best I could with my cat slicker brushes, rolled into rolags and spun. It's been washed since then, but is still a little harsh to the touch. I'm going to try soaking it in a dense fabric softener solution as someone suggested on Wednesday. The yarn on the spindle is spun straight from the fleece and then plied ( as it was very thin in places and thick in others so  decided that plying was best if I want to use it.
As you can see, both are pretty chunky spins.

This one is to demonstrate that the chunkiness may be due to my lack of skill in creating rolags. This wool was made from ready to spin rovings of different colours. I  took habdsful from each colour and made a new rolag. Chunky is definitely the word!

Comparison between yarn made straight from the fleece, and yarn mae from a rolag of rovings.

I was in two minds whether to wash this yarn from the fleece of not, but think that I will with this one so that I can compare it better with the others.

I'll wash it and let it soak in fabric softener and see what it's like when it's dry. It will probably take a few days to dry as the weather is now cold and wet.

I just got a knitting loom set that's a bit different.
It's in pieces! You can assemble looms of different sizes and shapes and even use it as a weaving loom as well as for knitting. Here is a picture of the kit with a sock loom put together from it.

As my kick spindle needs a more solid construction I will have to keep on with the drop spindle for now.

I probably had better not give up the day job!

My prototype DOES work, but  has what are best described as 'stability issues' despite the cats cradle that's trying to keep the uprights upright! It's also very ugly!!

 

Maybe I need to consider buying some actual wood and nails!

Hokay so I am slowly improving. Still dropping the spindle when I get too carried away trying to draft out, but the thread is thinner and more regular.

Oh but I wish I could try a spinning wheel! Out of the question though; not enough room, and certainly haven't got the spare several hundred pounds.
I looked at Charkhas which are a simpler kind of wheel where the wheel is turned by a handle. They are much cheaper (available from about £100)  but they require one handed drafting (thinning the fibre as it takes the twist) and I am not up to that yet. (Every attempt at one handed drafting results in broken thread.)

There is however a third option....kick spindles. here's one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKXca2l0RPo

They are available from about £85 and a much smaller. You turn the whorl with your foot so use both hands for drafting.

So I have decided to try and make one out of....
a brush handle, 2 cardboard tubes, a cardboard box, some gaffa tape (or cheaper alternative from Wilko) and dough.

Yes I said dough.

The trickiest part of the thing is the weight at the end and I thought I'd try making it from salt dough.

If that fails, I have some barbell weights that may serve if the handle will fit in their central hole. This will begin tomorrow.
.......................
Possibly.

Watch this space.

I'm spinning the right way around now!

Yes, ladels and jellyspoons, there is a right way to spin and a wrong way to spin. I in my innocence, naturally span the spindle in an anticlockwise direction because it just felt easier.

This, it turns out, is WRONG!!!

The correct way round is to spin it in a clockwise direction (judged as you look down onto the spinning thing just before it crashes to the floor.)

Apparently it has something to do with how the scales lie on the fibres. Spinning one way will give a stronger thread, and the other will give a weaker thread.

I did the first few balls anticlockwise, but have decided to follow the advice of all the websites and spin clockwise. 

The problem here is that my hands keep automatically spinning the other way!

Know what happens if you spin a length one way and then switch direction without realising? The thread unwinds is what happens and then the spindle falls to the floor.

Anyhow,

back to the washing of the bats that I left unfinished the other day.

After considerable hunting I finally found a way that removes the yucky mucky tips without felting, and the resultant bat is soft and fluffy and ready to be carded.

1st step is to fill a small bowl with very hot water and a LOT of washing up liquid. (For those who may use different brands of ENglish, washing up liquid is what we Brits call the stuff that you squirt into a bowl of hot water in order to hand wash the dinner dishes.)

A box of bats

3 bats and a bowl of hot soapy water

Take a bat and dunk the cleaner end into the hot water. Pull it straight out and squeeze the water gently out with two fingers.

Dipping the bat

 Now, dip the mucky end, and then, holding the thing firmly by the clean end, lay it on a solid surface and brush out the the mucky bit using a cat slicker brush. (One of those pet brushes with very fine wire bristles.) The very soapy water makes foam between the fibres of the bat as you brush and prevents felting. Now lay the bats on something to dry.

Drying bats.

Here are those same bats all dry and fluffy and waiting to be turned into a rolag.

Nothing at all to do with this really, but this is my neighbour's cat, Beasal making free with my walking boot.

He really likes those laces.

To be continued

I'll get back to the fleece later.

What have I learnt over the past 2 weeks that may be of use to the new spinner?
Well, let's see.
1, get a top weighted drop spindle.
In my opinion and (admittedly limited) experience, the top weighted spindle is MUCH easier to use than a bottom weighted spindle.
Remember my first line of my last post? Where I said that I need a hook?
That was because after several hours with a bottom weighted (Turkish) spindle I had decided to turn it around and use it as a top weighted one so I needed to put a hook on the other end. It's much easier to use that way.
Makes sense too; the reason why it's easier is that if the weight is at the bottom and your spin is at the bottom then the distance from the spin to the hook and thence to your drafting hand is much much longer than if the weight and whorl are at the top. This means that you are trying to keep the spun tension over a much larger length that isn't wound onto anything, and the chances of it breaking are much greater.

Top spindle is easier for the newbie, definitely!

2, make a notch in the side of your whorl if it's a round one. I found that as my spun bit got wider, my yarn kept slipping around the whorl and unspinning itself. The notch keeps it in one place and makes it easier to catch it onto the hook.

3, practice joining small pieces until you can do it without the unspin (if there is such a word) running backwards around your hook and into the stretch down into the spun bit. I still find that often while I am attaching a new bit to the end, it's unspun itself lower down and breaks down below as soon as I lift it to spin again.

OK I'd better get back to work now. Happy lunch break everyone.

I need a hook

But I have got ahead of myself.
Where was I? Oh yes.
So.
having been emboldened by my increasing mastery of the spindle (by increasing mastery, I mean that my spun yarn is becoming less like an anchor chain and more like a thread, and is marginally more regular so long as I don't get too carried away trying to spin like on the youtube videos,) I decided to get ambitious.
The cheapest way to buy wool is to buy an unprocessed fleece.
Oh yes!
Then you wash it, separate out the 'bats' and card it.
Hokay!

So I ordered a fleece off ebay and a few days later it arrived, a shaggy brown, grass tipped smelly mass of fur.
Looked online about washing it. I am NOT risking my washing machine's filter and I certainly don't want to felt this thing by accident so in the bucket it goes with plain cold water. A little swishing but only a little, let it stand a while, pour out water, and then repeat. I don't want to wash out too much of the lanolin so not using detergent at this point.

Sorry,  no photos of the washing because I didn't think to take any. However I have one of the dried fleece hanging on an airer.

Let me say at this point that if you are considering trying this, do NOT leave it to dry anywhere you actually spend any time or have to visit regularly. the bathroom, living room, bedroom, kitchen are all bad places to leave a fleece to dry.
Why?
Because it smells, that's why.
OK the smell isn't actually foul as such, but it is pungent, strong, and definitely barnyard.

Now, according to the videos etc, you now have a nice mass of wool that can be easily separated into bats.
errr right! I have a stretchy sagging mass of stretchy sagging stuff.
Bats? Seems to be a term for 'sheep dreadlock'.
How to identify a bat.
Find one of the dirty grassy tips which didn't wash off and tug at it. It should be a sort of finger of (hopefully not too matted) fur with the dirty tip at one end (which you are holding) and the cut ends where the sheep was shorn at the other.

to be continued