Spinning again. ( for Mr K sock's )

This really must be a labour of love, it takes so long and is a little hard work.



Above is a basket of washed Jacob fleece, not very pretty. It's all scrunched together and needs abit of work doing to it before spinning.



Here it is all teased out and airy looking, this is done by hand and is quite therapeutic and makes carding alot easier to do as most of the dirt and nasty bits that may remain after washing are removed at this stage



Here are the batts from the drum carder. Firstly I hand card to get all the fibres aligned correctly. I have found that for me it is easier to drum card if I hand card beforehand. Once I take the batt off the drum carder I split it lengthways into 4 and put it back through. I then take it off, split it in half lengthways and run it through once more. This makes the colour more even. Sometimes I don't do this, if I had wanted definate portions of the black and white of the jacob I would just drum card it once. The colours change in this from batt to batt but I quite like that and I'm hoping it will still look like that once plyed but I suspect it might not.



Here is the Jacob spun into singles, on the right. On the left is some Black Welsh Mountain fleece that has had exactly the same treatment. These 2 are now being plyed together for Mr K's socks.