Charge It Please!

My Mum said the one thing she didn't like was carding the wool. A whole lot of effort and not a whole lot to show for it.

My last post I showed you the cleaning process. Which by the way, I found out last night in my class that I'm a little too zealous in my cleaning... I cleaned it so well there is no lanolin left. Some lanolin is good. Ahem. Oops. I can tell you with my kitchen smelling like a barnyard and my sink looking like a poo bath, I wasn't thinking about lanolin and preserving some. We're just lucky this isn't bleached wool....

So, here is my wool all dry and clean except for a bit of hay and grass seeds and...... no poo thank you very much.

Next step is to use this puppy. Looks like an evil torture device doesn't it?

There are two of them. One for each hand. This way I can comb Henny Penny's hair and one of her brothers at the same time in the morning. I'm all about multi tasking.....

You put your cleaned wool on one of these suckers. Those of you that are professional carders...... no mean comments please. I'm learning here! If I remember correctly, this is called, "charging the card". If you ask me, I like my way of charging the card better........

Going in the opposite direction with your other torture device you start to card away. The idea being you get all of the fibers going in the same direction and all the funky gunky out of your wool. That's the idea. Not sayin' that's what's happening here......

Pretty cool eh? My arms, shoulders, and muscles don't think so......

This is not a closeup of my wool. It's a closeup of the wood. That is some cool wood grain. Sorry, I got side tracked. It happens.

When you think you're done or you're just plain tired and your arms are begging for mercy you take the wool off of the little wires and this is what you end up with.

A whole lotta...... ummm...... well....... okay maybe not a lotta....... I begin to see what my Mum means.... Great. Chalk up another point for once again my Mum was right. I hate that! Well, unless it comes to The Native's and The SM. Then I'M always right.... it's a smug feeling.

After your wool is carded then you can do all sorts of things with it. You can dye it, you can start to spin it. This week we're learning to spin on a drop spindle before we learn to spin on a wheel. All I can say is name any war in history and it's got nothin' on what has been going on between me and this stupid spindle. I am bound and determined to conquer it though!

As for the carding...... I think Thomas Edison was brilliant when he invented electricity. They make electrical carding machines........ they're kinda pricey though so in the meantime, I'm building some killer muscles in my arms. By the time I'm finished with this venture, I will have mongoid muscles and will have dead on aim throwing the spindle.

The End.

P.S. The warped thing about this whole story... I'm actually enjoying this process....... now THAT'S scary.