Happiness is a hand carder
Monday, July 11th, 2005Since I signed up for the [Natural Dyeing and Spinning for Sock Makers](http://www.fibrefestival.com/workshops.html) workshop at the upcoming Salt Spring Island Fibre Festival I’ve been gathering the required equipment — hand carders and a lazy kate.
The kate is the Ashford Precision Lazy Kate that I ordered from The Woolery. It came unassembled and unfinished — I just screwed the pieces together and didn’t finish it. Too bad it only fits Ashford bobbins — my Woolee Winder bobbins are too long for it. Ah well.
But here are my new fabulous hand carders:
I spoke at length with the Shuttleworks owner, Cal, before deciding on these carders. Originally I had thought to buy cotton cards because of the finer teeth, but he steered me towards the wool cards instead. These are quite fine wool cards at 190 teeth per inch (tpi) and eventually when I get a second set of cards they will likely be around 72 to 120 tpi.
These wonderful hand cards have allowed me to finally fluff up the accidently felted rovings and spin happily!
I’ve just been practicing using the cards and spinning either off the card directly or off rolags that are made with the fibres parallel. I did try spinning with some rolags that had the fibres laying horizontally but it made the spinning a little lumpy. Hand carding is slow, oh so meditative, and perfect for these small amounts of fibre.
