Carding for Art Batts Class at Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival

My post will probably be short on typing and heavy on pics:) That's really what y'all want to see any way. Or at least that's how I am....lol

The following pics are from the Carding for Art Batts class I gave at the Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival Saturday May 15. I had a wonderful group of gals there and they were very patient with me as I showed them how to make a puni, how to blend certain fine fibers, and how to diz to their hearts content with mounds of wild and fun fibers.

Also, I want to give a quick shout out to Otto and Joanne Strauch and their unbelievable servicing of the drum carders! They were demonstrating the Strauch Carders at the Festival. During my class, they came in and adjusted carders free of charge! I was so impressed with their service that I decided to get a Strauch dealership the next day! That's what I call CUSTOMER SERVICE!

Carding beautiful wool from Friday's dye class

End Results

OMG... I think this was gold sari or firestar with hemp and wool. Deliciously soft once it came off the drum!

Diz, Diz, Diz Away!

Life is but a Dream of....

Cotton Candy Fluff!

What is this I spy!?! Why it's milk weed fluff and...

When combined with wool and glitz it is the stuff Dreams are made of!

Joanne Strauch adjusting a carder:)

This is what silk hankies look like when sent through a carders and...

Then dizzed off with wool and angelina!

Puni & Craftiness or Bust Post

In the last post I said I would show you how to make a puni with a drum carder. In the event you are unfamiliar with what a 'puni or punis' is.... It is a hand carding preparation traditionally used with cotton fibers prior to spinning in which the cotton is rolled off the carder using 1-2 sticks to make a tube of fibers.

I use two large knitting needles and one of the drum carding herd (yep, I have a herd of carding tools:) to accomplish this with alpaca and wool. Sometimes I will spin directly from the puni, but for the larger part I prefer to pull it out into roving prior to spinning. My favorite thing about using punis is that you can really cut down on storage space for your batts as it compacts the fibers. Secondly, it helps the fibers come off the drum much more cleanly. And last but not least, you don't have to spin from the puni or pull it into roving. It is very simple to find the end of the batt and unroll it for big batt spinning.

Here are the steps laid out: And PS.... The fiber I am using is from Chris's alpaca so it is technically part of the Craft or Bust 2010;)

#1 After carding your batt stop here and go get your sticks or needles.

#2 Sandwich the batt between the needles like so.

#3 Start to roll the batt off the drum using the needles

Not really as step, but I wanted to show you how cleanly the batt comes off the drum.

#4 Before reaching the end of the batt drop your doffer on top of the tightly rolled puni. This helps to lay the fibers down and keep the puni in formation. Give it a few extra turns under the doffer. Don't worry if you do not have a doffer brush, here is what you do: Continue to roll the puni along the carding cloth surface after all the fiber has been picked up. Check it periodically to see if the roll is tight. Also note, you can do this for too long, so roll it just enough so that when you set the puni down it does not automatically want to unroll.

#5 See how tight. Now pull out the needles or sticks.

The end result.

Here I have pulled a bit of the puni into roving to show you.

This is not part of the puni demo. But, it is apart of my Craft or Bust Challenge. The three white balls on the Louet carder are more of the BFL from Sylvia's sheep now carded and ready to be spun. I have about one ounce on the wheel so far and these three weigh in a little bit over 4 ounces. I should be able to fill up my fiber hungry Louet S17's bobbin with a little room to spare;)

Mom's Yarn

A little story behind the yarn here. See, Mom & I were at the Southern Indiana Fiber Arts Festival. She being Mom saw the cutest little felt bag. So, I sent her back out from the booth to find some fiber to be spun for her to knit into the cute little bag with trinkets tacked on. Well, she came back all excited talking about another seller who had the perfect shade of pink she wanted for her bag. I went back and haggled, well, not really. The woman hated the pink color and I asked her how much for all. We lucked into over 1 pound of pink romney for $10…lol I still keep thinking we made out like bandits on the fiber! And I’ll bet she is thinking we are the biggest suckers…lol

Anyhow, I carded up about 8 ounces of it with a bit of yellow merino, silk, red firestar and blue wool nepps. The pictures are a pictoral of how the yarn started and how it ends.

Original ball of pink with spun yarn

I don't often spin from batts in batt like form! As I am taking them off the drum carder, I use two knitting needles to roll them off the carder into drum carded Puni's similar to cotton Puni's. From here, I can either draft the puni, spin from the puni or un-roll the puni to spin from depending on my present mood:)