I’ve been lured into somewhat of a trend. The trend is carding & blending boards! Such a beautiful tool are the ones purchased by Ashford, etc, and I was so excited to buy one, but I resisted knowing that I was perfectly able to make my own. So with Jeff’s help, I did…
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.
Mixing first by hand, then carding three times on the board,
it eventually looked like this…
Then I drew the 3x carded alpaca back on to the board, caught the tips in between two dowels, then began to pull out, roll, pull out & drafted it rolling into rolags…
Eventually I got through all 240 grams of it and made finally into some nifty rolags ready to spin, after a heck of a lot of work …
Honestly folks, do you have any idea how much work goes into making a simple 100g ball of yarn from raw fleece? I’m sure there are some of you out there who do.
Which brings me back to the carding & blending board. I did say that it is a bit of a trend, I mean, just look at the process of making art rolags…
The video shows really what the blending board is all about. I was actually using it in my above photos as a carding board for raw fleece, now I think I’ll go clean up the weeds and fluff that has spread all about my loft, because I am actually waiting for some combed top roving to show up in the mail.
Its such a strange modern era. I feel that I have shifted from wanting to create from the roughest and unrefined of raw materials ~~ my old self ~~ into craving the ease of beautiful prepared combed top roving to spin from, or with which to create those beautiful blend rolags ~~ my new self. I think I have worked something through here, and am considering offering to the wild all that old coarse wool from my earlier spinning days, and face a future of pleasure spinning clean exotic selection of fibers, as there is just so much available now. I have definitely reaffirmed my respect for those who spin from animal-to-yarn, I just can’t seem to be one to run with the flock anymore, but that is okay.
I do feel the urge to spin yarn again, after a long hiatus. I am very excited to come back and show off some really artful blended rolags from my plus size blending board, as well as the yarn spun from them!
