Making Cotton Balls

Unintentionally!

My wool is washed and now I'm ready to "card" the wool.

Carding is supposed to detangle and set your fibers in the same direction.

I suppose that's why I've never seen anyone card wool with one pet brush! What I found happening was, the fibers would catch in the brush instead of go through. The fibers didn't straighten, they bunched. Wool when carded will be lined up and then rolled to form a rolag or roving. This is a portion of the experiment that I need to work on a while!

I will embarrass myself though, I put a leader thread on my spindle and attached it the best I could to my "cotton ball" and spun a little CLUMPY yarn.

She sure spins nicely!

Don't be mean.

 

I am completely open to suggestions and in the mean time I'll keep pecking away. Stay tuned.

Washing Wool

From here on out I must tell you that this is an experiment that will take a lot of practice and probably a small amount of investment. What I'm going to do here is rustically explore spinning wool and I'll tell you the things I've discovered. I have never done this before and only have online reference to follow, and there is good reference out there. One site helped me the most, the woman explained her journey through the spinning process. It went something like this, the first day I had no success at all, the next day was pretty much the same with just a couple successes. Something clicked eventually and by the end of the week I had my first skein. This tells me everything I need to know, Keep At It!

Washing the wool

Again, if you want the exact procedure search online. This is what I learned:

#1 When washing wool, Don't Agitate It! That is unless you'd like to make felt instead.

#2 Use a non soap product such as dish detergent. I used Castile Soap which is made of plant oils and such and it had a nice peppermint smell.

#3 Use very warm water around 120 degrees.

Every site says something different but this was the procedure I used:

#1 Use a small dish pan and about one table spoon of detergent in the very warm water. Push wool in water and leave it there for 45 minutes.

#2 Lift the wool out of the water, set it aside, rinse the pan, fill it with the clean, very warm water and set the wool back in the pan for 45 minutes.

#3 Do the same as the last step except put a few tablespoons of white vinegar in the water. Soak again for 45 minutes.

#4 Gather the wool and gently squeeze. Lay it out on a towel to dry. You will need to turn it occasionally.

Soaking wool in clean, very warm water.

Drying wool.

As you can see I've also cleaned my cat brush. I have a stupid notion that I can card wool with it. We'll see how far I get with that!!!

Drop Spindle Experiment

I've been admiring the work of a few yarn artists. These people take wool from a sheep, sometimes having to prepare it first and then spin it into beautiful skeins. A lot of these artists are hand painting the yarn in beautiful mosaic colors. My friend at Knitting Dragonflies was happy to send me a couple youtube videos on drop spindles and give me some advice. She's in my blog list if you'd like to check her out. I am powerfully curious and I love making things from scratch.

In the videos, I watched people use items like old CD's and door stops so I knew I could use my imagination! Hockey puck I thought and Daniel's got them. If he'll give one up. So you need an upright, a weighted center and a hook at the top.

I had a 1/2" curtain rod dowel already drilled in the center, one less step.

Now the hard part, how difficult will it be to drill a hockey puck? Mark the center, be careful here because you don't want the spindle to wobble.

Oh, my dowel is 15" long, but you should cut yours according to the components you use. I felt this would be a good length for mine.

This 1/2" drill bit gave me no trouble going through the hockey puck. I had it secured in our vise while drilling.

I gently pointed the bottom end with an exacto knife and sand paper.

And gently rounded the top of the dowel and screwed in my hook. Daniel gave the hook a bit of a squeeze with pliers first to close it up a bit more.

It seems to spin real well. I tested it with some regular yarn. All I need now is some wool. I'll show you that tomorrow!