The Roving at the Bottom of Your Stash

 

I find laying out wool an exercise in mindfulness. The soft, silky wool in your hands, the repetitive movement all act as a way of relaxing the mind after a stressful day.

That is, if the wool is soft and silky.

Sometime wool – for reasons unknown, decides to semi-felt in storage. When you try to lay it out it resists and you have to tug harder. The wool doesn’t come away in gentle shingles but in lumpy tufts!

That kind of roving does not lead to mindfulness.

This roving resisted being laid out and was lumpy and inconsistent.

When this occurs you have a couple of options: (1) chuck it out, (2) throw it in the bottom of your stash and promise yourself you’ll use it “one day”.

Generally I have opted for option 2 and over the years have collected quite a lot of semi-felted wool lingering at the bottom of my stash.

Now I have discovered there is a third option: card the wool using a drum carder.

This morning I started a new project and knew that I had just the right colour grey roving I’d dyed several years ago in my stash. As soon as I started to lay it our I knew why it was still sitting there unused. Perhaps I hadn’t been as gentle with it when I dyed it or maybe it had just felted itself in storage. But either way it was going to be a battle to achieve a consistent layout of the shingles.

Out came the drum carder. I bought it as part of a job lot awhile ago when an elderly lady was selling all her spinning equipment, but never bothered to use it until recently.

The cost of living and the rising price of wool has had me looking at the roving at the bottom of my stash and putting it through the drum carder as a way to make it useable again.

It is also a great opportunity to blend colours to achieve just the effect you want.

This morning I decided to blend my grey wool with a bit of cinnamon to get the effect of bark I was looking for.

The wool came out with beautiful loft and was a dream to layout.

Yes, it took me a little while to card the wool, but saved time in laying out and gave me a lot more pleasure in the process.

The result of using the carded wool is a very fine and consistently even felt.

This is the pre-felt made from the carded wool

If you can get your hands on a carder and have some roving that is lingering at the bottom of your stash then I can highly recommend carding your wool before you felt it.