Carding willowherb fluff

Look what I've got!

This was supposed to be a just-opened-the-box photo, but I couldn't resist playing with them first.

These are mini carders, hence the relatively cheap price of £12.95 + £2.75 delivery. I'm not sure exactly what pitch the pins are, but they're described as, fine.

The last time I attempted carding I was about six and visiting a friend's grandmother. I can't remember much about it. Luckily I don't have to as the internet is full of helpful advice. I found a blog post with nice clear pictures and, specifically for cotton, a video that gave me a good feel for the technique.

My first few attempts didn't go terribly well. I didn't know whether this was because I had the wrong tools, or it's not possible to work this fibre or, more likely, because I lacked the skill. I persevered and it got a bit better. After a while I got the hang of spreading the fibre out over the surface of the pins without pushing it too far down between them. With a bit more work I managed the next stages of the process, too. Here's how it went after a few goes:

First, put some fluff on one of the carders, pressing lightly so it stays put.

See the links above for how to do the actual carding. It ended up looking like this:

I then used this fine metal comb...

... and my fingers...

... to roll the fluff up loosely.

I rolled this over the surface of the pins, which made the roll much more compact. I guess this is the same process as needle felting.

I now have six little rollags, or punis, as they seem to be called if they're cotton.

the next step, of course, is to try spinning them. I've never spun rollags before and I can see myself pulling several of these apart before I get them hang of it. Maybe I need to make a few more before I move on to spinning.

Playing with plant fibre

I enjoy spinning and live in an area full of sheep. I could easily get hold of a fleece, so what's stopping me? Well, fleeces don't come off the sheep ready to spin, they need washing and carding first. I don't have the tools for carding, which is a fairly major obstacle, but the washing puts me off almost as much.

Wet wool is heavy and hard work to handle, and there's a big risk of felting while washing. Then I'd have to dry it afterwards, which in this climate is a serious challenge. All in all, I'm not greatly enthused about the prospect of preparing fleece for spinning.

On the other hand, there are fibres around that look a lot more attractive.

Rosebay willowherb has spectacular flowers and spreads its seeds on the wind with little downy parachutes. As the seed pods open in the sun, bundles of fluff are released.

It's this fluff that attracts me. It's so beautiful! By way of experiment, I gathered a few pods full of fluff. It was so soft that I couldn't even feel it on my hands.

It wasn't too difficult to pick the pieces of pod out of the fibre, apart from the gravity-defying property of the little parachutes. I'd be trying to put fluff down in a pile, and little bits of it would detach themselves and float up past my face.

After a while, though, I managed to get a bundle of fluff without bits of seed pod stuck in it, though I didn't manage to remove all the seeds.

Ideally, at this point, I'd card the fluff, which would not only line up all the fibres in the same direction, but hopefully also comb out the remaining seeds. As I said above, I don't have carders, but I found that by pulling the bundle apart with my fingers, the fibres aligned themselves quite nicely.

The big question, of course, is whether it would be possible to spin this fibre? One critical factor is staple length, i.e. the length of individual fibres. I tried to look up the typical staple length of wool, for comparison, but it turns out that this question is rather like, How long is a piece of string? Anyway, it's upwards of two inches (50 mm).

A more sensible comparison, perhaps, is cotton, as that also comes from seed heads. There is considerable variation here, too, but it seems to range from about half an inch to about one and a half inches (13-38 mm). I measured a little clump of fibres, and it was about half an inch long. That's right at the bottom end of the range for cotton, which is considered poor quality, but perhaps it's just about long enough to be feasible.

Having concluded that theoretically, it should be possible (just) to spin this, I decided to try a bit. Not with the wheel, as I'd need a larger quantity for that. I just teased out a bit and twisted it with my fingers to see whether I could persuade it to form a thread.

Yes. Yes, I could get a thread, of sorts. It's not at all strong, but then it is very fine. I don't think I'd be aiming for such a fine thread, so with more fibres running together, hopefully it would be a bit stronger. It would probably be better if I had the right tools, too.

This brings me back to the question of carders, which is a bit of a sticking point as they're expensive. Like, fifty quid expensive. That feels like a lot of money for something that might not work. Furthermore, not all carders are alike. The ones for cotton are much finer (more teeth per inch) than the ones for wool. If my daft idea of spinning willowherb fibre didn't work out, I'd have an expensive set of carders and no use for them. I'm not sure what to do now: Do I risk the money on something that may turn out to be useless?

Second attempt at spinning

Four years ago, after taking a spinning class, I wrote,

I very much enjoyed the class and think this is something I'd like to do more of. I also think I learnt enough to get started on my own, provided I don't leave it too long before trying again. Once I've got started, I suspect I could make a lot of progress with just practice, though there's probably a lot I could learn from other people, too.

At about the same time, a dear friend of mine offered to lend me her spinning wheel, as she hadn't used it for some time. As it happened, the next time we met was at her son's wedding, and she kindly brought the wheel with her to the wedding and handed it over to me there. Chatting to her daughter Polly on the same occasion, I lightheartedly promised that I'd wear something handspun to her wedding, at some unspecified time in the future.

Once home, I found the wheel a little daunting. I looked at it nervously from time to time, noting its lack of drive belt or connection between treadle and wheel, and the bits of half-spun wool tangled around the wheel's axle. I picked at these occasionally until eventually the wheel ran freely, but didn't get much further, and the wheel gradually retreated to an out out of the way corner.

Provided I don't leave it too long. Hmm...

Just over a week ago, Polly got married. Some weeks before that, I started thinking about my promise to wear something hand spun. I was quite sure she'd have forgotten about it and even if she remembered, was hardly likely to care. All the same, it was a reminder of just how long I'd neglected the wheel and it was a shame to leave it unused, especially considering the effort taken to get it to me. In the meantime, I had got as far as buying some carded wool, with the best of intentions to use it. I had a little bit of cheap brown wool to practise with, and some gorgeous purple merino to make something nice.

As at the class, if I started with beautiful purple fluff, surely whatever I made would end up looking nice?

With the deadline of Polly's wedding to spur me on, I brought out the spinning wheel and gave it a bit of a rub down with furniture polish (wax and oil) because it looked a bit dry. I then turned my attention to the flexible parts. The treadle wasn't too difficult; it was fairly obvious how it needed to be connected, so I tied the two parts together with a bit of string, leaving it just loose enough to allow movement. I then consulted the internet to try and work out what kind of wheel I had, and therefore how it worked. The closest model I could find was the Kromski Polonaise:

Do check out Spinwise.co.uk, where I pinched the photo from. They have many nice things.

Having found a similar wheel online, I could see that it differed from the one I learnt on in a key feature: Instead of having a break (an element I found to be of utmost importance to my spinning attempts), it is a double drive wheel. This means that the drive belt goes around the wheel twice, once to drive the flyer and once to drive the bobbin. The drive wheel on the bobbin is smaller than the one on the flyer, meaning that the bobbin turns faster, and the difference between the two is what gets the yarn wound onto the bobbin. There are two things going on here: First the yarn is twisted, then it is wound onto the bobbin. All very clever, but the fixed ratio made it feel like I had less control than with the brake.

It seemed that string was an acceptable material for a drive belt, so I made a belt from string. First though, I had to find out how to adjust the tension. This involved twisting knobs that didn't want to be twisted - most nerve-racking on someone else's wheel.

String? What string? I have no idea what you're talking about.

Once I had the wheel working, with a little help from George, I had a go at spinning my cheap brown wool. It wasn't easy. To start with, I couldn't get it to wind onto the bobbin at all. I spent ages adjusting the tension until it occurred to me that maybe I wasn't spinning the yearn fine enough to go through the orifice, and it was just getting stuck. As well as working on my spinning technique, I did quite a bit of polishing of various parts of the wheel, and eventually got going. By the time I got to the end of the 50g of brown, I was feeling reasonably confident that I could make a useable yarn. It was still very thick - so much so that I decided not to ply it (twist two together) but use the singles directly, as I didn't want super-chunky yarn (nor was I entirely sure the bobbin would take it).

I crocheted up the brown practice yarn, both to check that it was actually possible to crochet single ply, and see what size piece I'd end up with following the pattern I had in mind. I say, follow and pattern as if it was all written down. It was just an idea. Crocheting it up gave me a chance to see whether it was a good idea or not.

After reasonable success with my test piece, I started work with the purple fluff. George like this very much. I managed to persuade him not to get into the bag of fluff, but he kept getting as close to it as he could.

George liked the purple fluff.

My spinning wasn't very even...

Lumps and corkscrews

... but I'd seen beginners' guides offering the advice that first attempts usually end up being fancy yarns like this, so I didn't feel too bad about it. Also, I discovered that it's possible to improve it after the event with careful twisting and drawing out, though there was a risk of breaking it every time I did this.

I crocheted the yarn straight off the bobbin, without bothering to wind it into a ball in between. This meant I was alternating spinning with crocheting, which I quite enjoyed. Since I was using singles, I could join one bobbin-full to the next in exactly the same way as I'd join yarn when spinning, so I have a piece crocheted from a single strand of yarn, which is quite pleasing. The second time I did this, I failed to take the bobbin off the spinning wheel before joining, leaving me with a bobbin-full of yarn on one side of a small hole, and a half-crocheted scarf on the other. The crochet work was somewhat less portable than it might be until I'd finished that bobbin.

Here is the finished garment, modelled by George:

George serving as a black velvet cushion

It's a little too short to be a scarf, and a little too narrow to be a shawl, but at something between the two, it's quite wearable, and I did indeed wear it to Polly's wedding.

With my brother-in-law, nephew and niece, who played their parts as page boy and flower girl excellently

The next step is to start from a raw fleece and learn how to scour and card it. This may require the purchase of equipment.