Packing it in

SpinningGill came round this morning and we fitted in a brief session drum carding. The intention had been to do some production carding this week but time seemed to get away from us.

I had set up in the conservatory, with my carder and Gill brought hers round too. The idea was that she would put the fleece through hers first and then I would give it a second pass on my Ashford carder. We were just about to begin work when I recollected that packer brush that I had purchased but not yet deployed. Now seemed the ideal time to try it out. I took photographs so that we could write an article for Sanday Spinners. Who knows, I may get around to doing so tomorrow…

Fitting the packer was simple and straightforward – the only tools required are a nail and a spanner and both are supplied in the kit. The instructions are comprehensible and thankfully involve neither oriental characters nor cartoons or cups of tea.

Loosen the bolts slightly and then fit the brackets

Gill did the twiddling while I read out the instructions and took the photographs.

Fit the knobs to the ends of the brush bar

Only a couple of steps and two minute’s effort…

Attach the brush to the newly fitted brackets

… left me wondering just why I had not got around to doing this previously.

Angle the brush fibres to be halfway into the carder teeth

Ta – da!

Makes a nice fat batt

First impressions are favourable.

Gill's carder has a little more age and character than does mine

We carded the Jacob fleece that Gill has been working with recently. Her carder has a larger drum than the Ashford but with the aid of the packer brush I was able to fit two of her batts onto mine and we made a total of four fat and springy batts for about an hour and a half’s work, including coffee, biscotti, gossip and all the etceteras.

We barely dented the fleece stash.

More work required.

NOTES:

  • the fleece was from Connie
  • we carded  it in the grease
  • the biscotti were delicious
  • dunking was permitted

NB – if anything looks odd or misspelled or whatever, please forgive. I’ve had a reinstallation on my PC and everything is wrong. I’ll be getting my space back the way that I like it over the coming weeks, and the first job is to get my spillchucker reinstalled! The second job will be getting to grips with my new image editing facilities… that looks like taking an age.

I’m off to photo class tomorrow. Perhaps we can look forward to some quality improvements around here in the short term!

2 Comments

  1. September 16, 2011
    Reply

    I must get some more fleece prepped, at the moment I spin and card as I need it, so sometimes I can’t face the carding, so have nothing to spin.

    • September 16, 2011
      Reply

      I tend to spin fleece after just teasing it if I can.

      If only all fleeces were of that quality! The Corriedale/Romney that occupies Morgana at the moment is bing flicked one lock at a time but when I have filled this bobbin I’m going to drum card the remainder for speed. I want to move on to a different fleece as soon as possible.

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