Tweedy mossy wool sausages are the most recent in my string of obsessive experiments in color blending, and this time in which I am basically carding by using the blending board alone! I lay down the layers, and lifting the batt after teeth are full, section out the batt and with little pieces I pull down into the teeth again and again and again. This process doesn’t need hand carders, I am able to homogenize colors & fibers with the blending board as the only carding tool!
The depth of color created from blending many colors together create a stunning result! Compare to the original solid dyed olive roving, to the tweedy rolags with a prism of colors hazing into each other, all together making a very similar green. (I will show spun yarn photos later, for I have notes on actual spinning that I want to go into a little depth about)
I am documenting my tweed yarn making process, hoping that I will arrive with a few tested methods which I can use as recipes in future to refine my own tweed color palette. I am inspired now, to do it all with only my blending board , because there is such freedom unfolding ahead of me, in discovering I can perfectly well make my own personal tweed colorway from an array of solids in the fiber of my choice ~~ making the vertical hand-made experience all that much more in depth & customized. I feel like I am my own micro wool mill, and I am unstoppable.
Meanwhile, I hope all of this fiber tech stuff does not bore the socks off of you ~~ if so, I promise, this will be a string of a few more posts, then I will move on to my usual philosophical banter about life on the mountain.
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Now back to the techy stuff…
Edit In: I have posted HERE a final best method of my Fiber Blending Recipe #3.
Notes on Blending Recipe 3: For the best homogenization of color I have used only wool fibers, they are: undyed fawn Shetland, olive Corriedale, mallard (dark teal) Corriedale, and amber corriedale. Here is what I am doing , as illustrated by a photo slideshow at the bottom of the post. In case you want to make more than one micro batch, a good idea to write down weights of each color, so you can repeat process.
- Portion out the fiber I want to mix, weighing if possible.
- One at a time, thinly layer each color into the teeth of the blending board, combing down the fiber between each layer, until all the fiber is loaded onto the board and the teeth are full.
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With comb lift whole batt off of teeth.
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Divide batt now into small sections, and again thinly layer into teeth, pulling and drafting & “carding” as you thinly layer again. You are essentially carding using your hands to pull fiber along one carding surface.
- Repeat this process until the fibers and colors are fully homogenized, or as desired.
- Draw fiber out into rolags!
You can find all of my experiments in blending & Fiber Blending Recipes HERE
Okay then, here’s the show!
I bought 24″ of very expensive 12″ carding cloth, but still less expensive than a new 12×12″ board. We cut some plywood to size, and after a quick glue & nailing down the carding cloth, added a footing to the head, and a handle, and ended up with double the size of the regular blending boards available. Not bad! I then spent hours practicing on some old weedy raw fleece I had hidden away, found my old carders, and had a go with some alpaca.
Jenjoyce Design 
