Making yarn...

These books have been in my hands often. One Ruth gave me.. thank you Ruth! And 'The Joy of Spinning' goes back to the library in 2 days. I'll miss it. A very special thanks to my blogging friend Marlene, who to me is an expert spinner and knitter. She has never turned down my call for help yet! I hope you have a few minutes to come along for my picture show. If I had the time and know-how I could have done a 'slide show' but I've got to hurry away and practise my cello so I can begin washing up that huge bag of soooo dirty wool and get carding! There are about 11 pictures here with brief words of description. If you're interested in seeing the process from sheared fleece to spun yarn...come along with me...=).

A messy room but an accurate picture...grin. Hey, I'm having fun, its ok...

The beauty of wool...isn't it something wonderful! This is wool roving...cleaned and carded...processed at a professional mill. It spins just the way the rolags do. My son brought me the colored ones..orange ..gold...green from Switzerland. The purple varigated was dyed from all natural plants...bought one time at a Craft Days in our area. You know the kind, where the person has great big kettles of dye simmering and they are dipping the yarn into it and you go.....wow!!!! The white yarn, wish I could remember what kind this is...was one they used to let me learn to spin on my Lendrum spinning wheel which I then bought I liked it so much. Anyway, bought some of the yarn too. It was sooooo soft...=)

Here the washed wool is put on the carder for carding. Carding straightens the fibers. Anyone that wants to add to this just leave a comment..I'm a new spinner and carder...=). All advice welcome!

Here the clean wool is just starting to be carded by rolling the roller over the carding teeth on the bottom. You do this 5 or 6 times until the board is evenly covered. The rolling motion is always away from you. At the end of the carder you pick the roller up and start at the 'lovet' end and roll away from yourself again. Easy and fun....

Here you can see that as the rolling pin like roller which has small metal teeth is rolled over the flat part of the carder which has metal teeth going in the opposite direction,... it is straightening the fibers.

With the help of the brush at the side and/or my fingers, I roll the wool down the carder, which forms what is called a 'rolag'. You pinch a bit of the end of the rolag and gently the fibers will slide apart and it is this that feeds into the orifice on the spining wheel and is spun into yarn.

Newly made rolags to spin with. It has been pointed out to me that the small balls scattered throughout the rolags, called 'noils' need to be removed before carding. I'm thankful to learn this...or how else would I know!

Clean wool ready to be carded.

A bit of the rolag that has been spun. The white is now a cream color.