Fiber Monday - Batts

That would be batts, two 't's', not bats, one 't'. The first being spinning related, the second being a small flying mammal. One of the fiber-y things that happened here over the past couple of weeks is that various children and I made batts. I'll show them to you in a moment.

You see, also over the past couple of weeks, I impulsively ordered two pounds of mill ends that I found online. Mill ends would be the leftover prepared wool that a mill ends up with after preparing fleeces. These were a whole huge bag full of various odds and ends of different colors and fibers. There wasn't enough of any one type to do something with, so combining them together was definitely called for. 

Enter the drum carder. 

What you can't see in this picture is the smaller drum that feeds fiber on to the larger drum. There is a handle on the other side to make them turn. (The reason for the odd picture is because J. needed it, which I'll get to in a moment.) I bought this from an area sales group at the same time I bought my good spinning wheel. (It was pretty much the buy of the century in terms of what I got for what I paid.) G. has always been a little fascinated by the drum carder, so she was eager to help me.

First we got out all of the mill ends and put them into piles based on what we thought would go nicely together. Then we picked a color to begin with. Yellows and oranges are never really my go-to color, so it seemed a good color to sacrifice in case things went awry.

The drum carder combines and aligns the fiber so it can be spun. Here is what is looked like in progress (as well as being a much better photo of what the drum carder actually looks like.)

Once you have filled up the carder, you then carefully take the batt off of it. 

I will pull these into manageable strips and spin from them. The yarn will probably be variegated in the different colors that make up the batt. I'm kind of excited to try it and see how they turn out. I do have several other projects that need to be finished first, though. 

Being so happy with how these turned out, we then collected all the blues and greys.

Here is one of the three batts we ended up with.

At the very end of making these batts, the drum carder stopped working. It just wouldn't turn. So J. took the entire thing apart (hence the need for photos of how it was put together), discovered it just needed some oil, and put it all back together again. In the interim he also discovered that the drums were adjustable, so moved them a little closer together which made it work much better.

The next day we made these.

By this time, many other children also wanted in on the fun.

Along with making batts, I also combed a lot more fleece for the sock yarn I'm spinning. I am about 0.2 oz away from having the second bobbin finished, which gives me just one more bobbin to fill before I can ply it and have yarn. I think the amount of fleece I have will be about perfect. 

I've also been working on making samples for the knitting class and for the sheep to scarf class I'm teaching next fall for our co-op. We have an open house at the beginning of April, and I want to have something to show which gives an idea of what we are going to be working on. All of those are still a work in progress so when they are done I'll show you all of it. I feel as though I'm working on more than a few projects all at once and just flitting back and forth between each of them, none of which are really what I want to be working on. I'll be glad when the samples are all made.