response on carding wool

I've been off line for a few days and have just caught up with the spinning questions. I expect this is irrelevant now. I have been spinning and carding my own wool for almost 20 years. I use a British made drum carder which I like very well, but the Louet one sounds very good too. I would like to underline the comment already made that wool really needs to be thoroughly washed first before carding. I wash my fleece by filling buckets of very hot very soapy water in the bath tub and dunking about a quarter of the fleece into each bucket and leaving it to soak for 2 hours. Then I rinse by gently tipping out the water from each bucket and placing the drained fleece on the top of the bucket upturned. Then I spray very thoroughly with the shower nozzle over each fleece. When its drained out for about an hour or so I lift it into my spin dryer. I keep a spin dryer just for this purpose. When its spun I lay it out on a sheet on the grass or better still on top of a wide hedge I have. If the fleece hangs together well it can then be brought in and dried completely on a radiator or other source of heat. I find it goes through the carder really easily when really clean. I pick out all the blobby bits and throw them. The carder won't sort out those bits it just makes the overall thing difficult to spin. I always put the wool back through the carder at least twice, sometimes three times. I line the batts up on the table that have been through once and then peel a bit of each one and make my second run of batts that way. Then they are well blended. The carder doesn't need much cleaning when you clean the wool first. Its hard to turn the handle if the wool is greasy. Sarah.

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