Carding Crazy

At our 1066 Spinners meeting last Saturday Mary had brought her drum carder in to show me how it worked, as I had been asking about it.
Basically for those who don't know, carding is part of the preparation of fleece or fibre before spinning commences. (There are other methods for different types of spinning like combing but I'm not familiar with them yet.)I have a couple of hand-carders like two extra large dog combs and you comb the fibre through these a few times, transfer the fibre all onto one brush and roll it up into something called a rollag.

Basically the drum carder is just a larger version of this, as you can see it's a basic machine with a large drum and small roller covered in metal teeth. You feed the fibre in on the far left and turn the handle and keep doing this until it's full.

Then there's a metal lip where you gently seperate the fibres and roll the fibre off the drum carder, you are left with a kitchen roll sandwich of fibre

called a batt.

Needless to say I've been going batty, dying fleece and making batts all week.

More photos to follow soon.